We will not post on this blog anymore untill we go on holiday again.  It will probabely be a while before we go so far again, but who knows what opportunities arise

This map is the complete route we took. We drove more than 3000 km and as you see we only covered a tiny bit of Australia. But the locals confessed that there isn’t a person who has seen it all or even most of it – though everybody agrees that it would be nice to see more.

Our trip back to the Netherlands went pretty smoothly and we are now home again, tired but satisfied.  We can look back upon a very interesting holiday in a very engaging place. The most obvious conclusion we can draw is that Australians on the whole are really nice people: Friendly, helpful, open and interested. As soon as they see you looking around searching, or with a map, they immediately ask if they can help you. Everybody will talk with you and ask questions, exchange experiences or give you tips.

They are quite tidy too: everything there is very clean and there are free toilets everywhere – and you can use them all safely because the other users will leave them neat and clean. I’ve never had one without toilet paper and only rarely without soap. In the wilderness parks you will encounter the composting-toilets; a hole on top of a heap of fertilizer. But most people close the lid properly afterwards, so I only had a really stinky one once. Amenities at the camp-sites are clean and tidy too. Most camp-sites have a bucket and a floor wiper ready so you can clean your shower quickly after you’ve used it. I am afraid that most Aussies will be very disappointed when they come to Europe; you have to pay for toilets and you have a fifty-fifty chance of finding a clean one.

The trucks you encounter are often bigger than the Dutch ones, and longer. Not broader though; everything that takes up more than half the road has a little truck labelled “Oversized” driving in front of it to warn the oncoming traffic. The lorries are also very elegant: most of them have a lot of polished chrome and even their hubcaps are usually polished till they shine like mirrors. On the road we also noticed that the cars are more colourful than the ones on the Dutch roads. Though Aussies are notoriously uninterested in dressing up as a fashion statement you see in their cars as well as their houses that they like bright colours. Roofs and walls are more often painted than not, especially with the wooden houses we found most common in the ‘newer regions’.

Australians have their own lingo too. A lot of it is slightly old-fashioned English, so Tim had no trouble understanding it. A docket is a ticket/receipt, cordial is the kind of lemonade you have to mix with water (“limonadesiroop” in Dutch), a nursery usually is a place where you can buy baby plants (weirdly enough the protection they put around saplings planted by the roadside makes them look like a special kind of cemetery) , a doona is a duvet (“dekbed”) and usually has a sheet under it instead of a cover all around it, all kinds of suck sweets are called lollies, a box of wine is called a cask and coffee is ordered as a long or short shot of black, depending on how much water should be added.

Like Americans, they tend to have very colourful and enthusiastic descriptions that can set your expectations slightly higher than is advisable. But since they DO have a lot of very beautiful and enjoyable things we will gladly forgive them for it. The only thing in Oz that bothered me was the water; tap water had a very chlorinated taste so you really had to buy bottled water (or cordial).

We had to get used to buying our drinks before we went to a restaurant, but unless they state that they are fully licensed they really expect you to Bring Your Own. Quite often the “bottleshop” where you can buy the booze is conveniently close, so it is not a problem.

Daily cost of living seems to be slightly lower than in the Netherlands. On average things are about 80% of what you pay here, clothes probably even less. You have to watch out with the money though. The paper money resembles the European kind; each value has its own colour and size and bigger is worth more money. Their coins are harder to get used to. The most valuable coin is worth two dollars, and is a tiny bronze coloured kind. The slightly bigger one is one dollar, but the biggest ones are silver and only 20 cents.

School uniforms are the norm and most of them include a floppy hat. Ozzies seem to be so used to the floppy hat that they also wear it under helmets and hard hats. Tourists who unfortunately find themselves stranded without luggage should know that there are a lot of shops to buy second hand clothes. St Vincent de Paul was a charity shop we saw in almost every town in NSW, though we also saw Salvation Army shops (they look very slick and at first we thought they were a commercial chain) and private ones with names like Second Hand Sam.

The bins I saw in most caravan parks were clones of the commune provided ones we use at home, except that they were almost universally green and the recycling ones were yellow. I found myself unexpectedly trained to throw only biodegradable stuff in green bins and had quite a hard time overcoming the Pavlovian reaction. Their recycle bins are mostly distinguished by a bright yellow lid. Sometimes they want you to put everything recyclable in the same bin (paper, plastic bottles, aluminium cans), sometimes they had different bins for different kinds of recyclables. But they did not have a special one for what we call “chemical waste”, ie things like batteries and toner. So you dispose of old batteries by throwing them in the general bin, and presumably the same goes for paint and nail polish remover and all other materials we have to collect separately in the Netherlands. Till I received our battery-charger again I used AA’s for my camera, but I must admit that I disposed of them by giving them to a waiter – the Pavlovian training runs deep.

The mailboxes often were not familiar at all. We are used to very standard mailboxes. But in Oz they are less strict about what your mailbox should look like. Some people used (rusty) old milk churns or oil tins, I even saw a plastic bucket once. Others build houselike boxes with gable roofs and some were very creative. We should have a few photographs of those and will put them in an album on the photo page.

Tim found many things in Oz highly familiar, “Old-fashioned British”. Marjolein liked their tidiness and structure: on every high bridge is a sign saying that it is forbidden to jump off it, even though, in most cases, you would be prosecuting a corpse. We both liked their cheerful pragmatism and easy-going tolerance. Aussies live and let live, perhaps because there is an enormous amount of room, if you do not like someone you can easily avoid them. We would love to go back and could even envision living there and fitting in pretty easily: as one Australian told us, all of them (except of course the Aboriginals) are newcomers.

Assisted by the street directory we managed to get our luggage to my uncle’s place and the camper van to Apollo (the place we hired it from). Unfortunately we managed to get one of those rare specimens at Apollo; the unfriendly Australian. Tips about camper vans: fill it up before you return the van, because they charge 4 times the local price per litre (Tim went to another petrol station and returned the van a bit later). Don’t be nice and try to prepare the chemical toilet for them; everything has to be completely empty. Make sure you don’t stand sloped when you empty the grey water, because if something is left in the tank you have to empty it in a bucket and dispose of it elsewhere.

We took the train to Circular Quay because we wanted to take the ferry to Manly one last time, as a goodbye to Sydney. It was late by then, so we sailed away in twilight, seeing the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge getting dark and then being lighted in the dark night. Sydney changed from huge modern skyscrapers in daylight to a vast darkness with a million lights. No pictures unfortunately: a moving boat is not the best place to take pictures of dark places.

In Manly we took a cab to my uncles house, and went out to an Italian restaurant. My niece came after dinner with her bloke and daughter, which was really nice. We have corresponded with very irregular intervals since I was 12 and she has been to the Netherlands a few times, so it was really nice to see her here again. Her daughter and our boys got on like a house on fire (literally, lots of screaming and running away), so they had a great (but late) evening too.

This morning we woke with the rising of the sun, as usual this holiday. We sorted out our luggage and packed everything as efficient as possible. We had to buy two new bags en route to carry the new buys to replace our missing luggage, and they are totally filled. Lost luggage will do that to you, but how we will get everything home is something I hardly dare to think about. We already had a hard time getting all bags from Haarlem to Schiphol and we now have a lot more to carry. The cab we took yesterday was a little van, and the bloke promised to be here at one to transport us to the airport, so that should be doable, and in the Netherlands we might commit some taxi-taking too.

I’ll try to find the time for a concluding post with our observations and tips for other Australian tourists; the conclusion about our holiday is clear enough. We had a whale of a time and would love to visit again!

Yesterday after dark the kids had a great time spotting possums. They tried to feed them leaves, which led to a little tragedy when one of them mistook Daniels finger for a carrot. But it is a small wound and after the initial shock it didn’t hurt much, so we only disinfected it and put a plaster on it. They then went spider hunting in the toilets, but fortunately they only found an innocent huntsman spider and only in the gents toilet section, so I am safe for now.

The next morning we woke up with loud birdsong and beautiful sunshine, so we had our breakfast outside. Tim left his raisin toast alone for a minute and say a big black winged thief take of with it, and the kids got raided by lorikeets again, which is not a bad morning at all considering that you are in the middle of a big busy town.

We packed everything and cleaned the campervan because we have to take it back this afternoon. We do hope to have time for a walk through this nice park though. If ever you need to be in Sydney, we would certainly recommend staying in a cabin here instead of a hotel; there website is www.lcrtp.com.au and their GPS cooridates are: Latitude 33° 47’19.56” S, Longitude 151° 8′ 34.14” E. They are slighty hard to find, we needed to buy a Sydney street directory to get here, but it is well worth the effort!

I am not sure we’ll be able to internet before we leave (though I will certainly try to get to Circular Point where they had nice coffe and free WiFi), but we will fly tomorrow afternoon and hope to land in London at 7.45 and , Heathrow willing, will be in Amsterdam at 11h Saturday the 11th.

We managed to get to Oberon without any problems, though rather late so we dined out in one of the local restaurants. Oberon is quite high, 1100-something-metres, and as a result rather cold in winter. We laughed at Australians complaining about the cold winter before, but this time I actually missed my gloves – that’s how cold it was.

Which didn’t stop us from noticing that it is a nice small village; must be really nice in summertime and is close to some beautiful spots. We trundled down to the threadbare local hotel for supper, which was a very home-made T-bone with lots of veggos and curly fries. The toads were too stuffed with bits and bobs to do it justice. The bar next to us was inhabited by genuine lumberjack types with worn denims, ghastly woolly hats and battered brown teeth. The next day we went on to Jenolan Caves, we missed the view from the Kanangra Walls (which kind of goes with the caves) because it was an unsealed road and we weren’t sure whether we could make it after heavy rainfall in our camper van. It is famed as being very spectacular, so we might have tried it if we had plenty of time. But though we do not feel rushed we do want to stay on our schedule, so we decided to skip the visit.

The caves were well worth the visit. It was a good thing that Tim was so much more at ease with driving our monstrosity; we couldn’t have made it down the small winding mountain road if he hadn’t – if only because my heart couldn’t stand the excitement of looking down into a ravine right next to me. The road was bordered by quite the frailest, most rotten wooden posts we have seen in a long time. They gave the impression that even the slightest error would send us and them tumbling into the abyss.

But we managed to get down without incidents and were just in time for the tour through the Lucas Cave. It is one of their biggest cave, and in the largest room they even have concerts (because of the great acoustics) and weddings. It is a limestone cave and in millions of years the water first made a series of chambers when the mountain was under water. The water carved itself ever lower channels , but the constant dripping of lime-saturated water made huge columns, stalagmites and stalactites, fantastical, frilly lace-like decorations and little humps of stone resembling people or animals. They named some of them (the bride, the groom, the bishop) but there were plenty of others to name with something out of your own imagination. The boys were awed and spoke in whispers most of the time. The guide made a good show of it, plunging us into darkness occasionally and then dramatically lighting up the weird and beautiful shapes around us.

We really loved the tour, but it is hard to photograph. If only because you don’t see the enormous scale of the caves. We were told that our tour had almost 900 steps on the stairs between sections, that should be an indication. We could have stayed there for days, but had to leave early in the afternoon for our trip to Bateau Bay. So we drove through the Blue Mountains, went past Sydney and arrived shortly after nightfall.

The next day we woke in a very different climate again. It was a nice and sunny day, the heated pool was accompanied by a heated spa, the beach was still lovely so a good time was had by all. At lunchtime my aunt arrived to have lunch with us and hear all about our adventures in Oz. When she left my uncle came to visit and see all photographs, and was kind enough to offer us another night of hospitality in his house in Sydney. A good thing, since I had just discovered that our flight back wasn’t on the 9th, but on the 10th. We called to see if we could have the campervan for another day, but that would cost us 288 dollars plus camping fees. Oops.

We rumbled on down towards Sydney, slightly downcast by the approaching end of our holiday and the prospect of plunging back into the urban tangle. Fortunately Marjolein found a nice stopoff at Australian Reptile Park, a very nice zoo that succeeded in both hitting the boys buttons with exciting presentations of big snakes and huge animatronic spiders and also providing a beautiful bush-walk with flowering trees and waterfalls. There was a very cool reptile-show with some tremendous lizards and baby alligators (apparently they are Australia’s largest alligator breeders) and the boys got their picture taken with a boa constrictor wrapped round them. Having attempted to feed them to the Dingos on Fraser island and now snakes I expect that we will find child protection services waiting on the doorstep at home.

There was also a Lost World of Reptiles exhibit with talking mummies and lots of turtles and big snakes. Daniel was thrilled by a gigantic sermonizing Egyptian statue with a crocodile head and glowing red eyes. It was of course surrounded by real crocodiles and laid down a solid conservationist message while blowin smoke out of its nostrils…

Another exhibition was about spiders, with a wall full of different tarantulas, a cheerful display about the two really deadly spiders that live here in Australia and what to do it they bite you: in the case of the funnel-web spider you have seventy two minutes to get help before the venom kills you… This was rounded off the previously mentioned fifteen metre wide animatronic red-back that periodically reared up, hissed and snapped its mandibles at us.

We all had a fine time and set off rather later than expected. We were rather dispiritedly heading for a camp-site near Sydney when Marjolein had a brainwave and navigated us towards a camp-site inside Lane Cove River, a small National Park on the edge of the city. Her maps ran out of detail as we closed in on it and entered suburbia, but we got some directions from helpful Aussie cyclists (Aussies are strikingly kind to random tourists and have helped us on our way lots of times) and bought a city map from a service station. We finally got there just as night was falling. The boys were overjoyed (they like National Parks unreservedly since we stayed in Tooloom and Warrumbungle), rushed off into the gloaming and came face-to-face with a possum, that gave them a look in the eye and then took to the trees. They spent some time possum-following and Daniel even got a nip on the finger from one that he was trying to feed leaves to. We took advantage of the surrounding city by ordering in pizza and all was right with the world.

Ah, the evil empire struck again: the MacDonald Cafe (or Macca, as they want you to call it) has wireless internet here. So we can have nice espresso, the kids can play, and I have 45 minutes to quickly upload the latest posts and photo’s – if I manage it in that time, there are a lot of photo’s…

This morning we left Dubbo in grey and wet weather, and drove on to Wellington for the caves. During our break in Wellington, because the cave-tours wouldn’t start for another hour, we read up on the caves in NSW and spontaneously decided to skip these and change our route. Flexibility-R-us at your service…

We are now on our way to Oberon, a bit past Bathurst, because we want to see the Jenalon caves. They have nine limestone caves and they are supposed to be really great. We will then go on to the entrance, where we will be the 7th. On the road we might, if we feel like it at that particular moment, visit the zig-zag railway and the glow-worm tunnel too, but we have no fixed route planned.