Back

Well, I'm now sitting in Mum's lounge room having arrived back in Melbourne last night. The heating is on, the TV is on, our tent is airing out on the clothes line and we love it. Unfortunately, we have to go to work tomorrow. Drat.

Our trip down the east side was quite a trip, each day starting early at around 8am and often ending with us setting up the tent in the dark. We arrived in Rockhampton at eight o'clock at night, attempting to find the hostel in which we were going to stay. We'd just had a pretty awful night in a small roadhouse caravan park in the middle of nowhere and were looking forward to a night with air conditioning and, you know, a bed. After some conversation with the receptionist and some arguments with the GPS we eventually got there.

Brisbane was beautiful, Sydney was... what is was, and Canberra was like a dingier version of Adelaide. I'll put some pictures up soon when I adjust to being in the real world.

The next stage of our journey is to prepare for Hungary (a mere 5 weeks away), we've got our tickets purchased and I'm just trying to organise my visa now. I have to make a payment to the agent that I'm using, then it'll all be organised.

It seems like it's just one amazing thing after another at the moment and it's causing my brain to hurt... in a good way.

- Daniel.

Darwin Times.

We're back in Tennant Creek beginning our return trip back to Melbourne.

We met up with Marsh in Darwin, went for a walk down at the beach with him, then met up again that night for dinner. Oh yeah, he also took us for a tour of the "base". We were surprised to see the rows and rows of large military equipment just lying around with only a city full of military personnel and a tank to protect them. It was kinda cool to see it all (although we were unable to take any photos). We also went to Marsh's dorm, which seems to look much like his room used to when he was sixteen, which was reassuring in a strange kind of way.

It was great to catch up though, Marsh seems really settled in his job, as always we can clearly see how much the army life suits him.

It was a bit sad at the end of the night as we realised that we wouldn't see him again before we headed off to Hungary, so it was a "longer" goodbye than it might have been otherwise. I suspect that there are going to be more of these as our six week deadline for take off approaches.

- Daniel.

Darwin is hot

Well, we finally made it to Darwin yesterday. It's so hot here. Not that anyone else seems to notice. They just go about their business. Without melting. It's weird.

Today as we drove in to the CBD, the streets were lined with people waving flags and sitting in fold-out chairs on the median strip. I must admit that I was slightly surprised at all the fuss the locals had gone to for our arrival....but then I saw some Holden flags amongst the crowd and realised that perhaps it wasn't us that people had come to see. It seems that there is some kind of car race in Brisbane this weekend and the path that we had taken in to the city was virtually identical to the one being taken by the convoy of trucks bringing the V8s and their support crews into the city.

Anyway, by lunchtime Darwin was a noisy, crowded hoon's paradise. And hot. So hot.

We're hoping to check out the beach night market tonight. And perhaps even catch up with Marsh.

Okay, time for a cool drink.

- Amanda

Alice and Beyond

Coober Pedy was a bit of a dust bowl, so we kept moving pretty quickly. Actually, Amanda and I were talking about this on the way up. My plan for this trip is to travel through as much country as possible to get what I'm calling "context". My version of Australia is not too diverse from Mount Waverley. I want to drive through the desert at 130km per hour overtaking roadtrains. I want to watch sunsets over a barren land and think of that as Australia, not a 30% sale at Chadstone.

Still, on the road between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs we drove straight through the small town of Erldunda without blinking the indicator. This could be perceived as a pity, as there lies Uluru. Amanda, I think, wasn't too happy to see us sail past Uluru without so much as a glance. I think indeed she wanted /me/ to see it as much as anything. I get that, but I'm just happy drive'n.

Anyway, we had an awesome night in Alice Springs. We met up with Heather and went out to a restaurant and really caught up in a way that we haven't done in quite a while. Heather has seemingly set herself up in an awesome place where she can travel to all these remote areas (currently four hours out of Alice Springs in an Aboriginal community, soon to be Christmas Island) serve as a nurse and really experience what it means to live there, not just sail through at 130km per hour.

Uluru absent, we went to the Devil's Marbles today and took some nice photos. It was an interesting place, not only for the interesting geology, but also for the veneer that has been painted on it. The indigenous communities say that the dreaming still exists under these rocks and that the "old men" come out to play if you camp there, they mean no harm but they will send you mad. The white communities tie it to a local area that is named the UFO centre of Australia. We arrived at this hub of auspice expecting to /feel/ the aura of the weird. Instead we saw some pretty cool rocks.

Fun fun.

- Daniel.

To Coober Pedy

Daniel and I have just arrived in Coober Pedy after a lazy 5.5 hour drive from Port Augusta. We spent our first night in the tent last night and it was actually pretty comfortable....even when it rained. Our new inflatable mattress is heaps better than a foam mat or bare sleeping bag. Loving it!

Today's drive was mainly kilometres and kilometres of desert scrub. Lots of gorgeous red dirt and very determined shrubs. I almost ran over a sheep and her lambs that were about to cross the Stuart Highway. I was on the lookout for cows and kangaroos and dingoes, but apart from roadkill there were none to be seen.

This morning Daniel collected some sea water from the ocean at Port Augusta. The plan is to take it all the way to Darwin. I reckon that by the time we arrive in Alice Springs tomorrow, we'll be halfway there.

- Amanda

Maccas be gone

No more maccas.

This is the lesson that we learnt today. After a marathon four hour session in Adelaide, then a one and a half our session in Port Augusta, we've realised hat the frustratingly slow wireless internet isn't worth it. It indeed seems to be the cause of all our arguments at the moment. So. Yes. No more maccas.

As aforementioned we're in Port Augusta today, which seems to be the crossroads between everywhere and nowhere. From here we could head west to Perth or (as we are planning) north to Coober Pedy. Amanda tells me that Port Augstua is the point that Flinders reached before realising that this wasn't the elusive North-South river system that would subdivide Australia. We spent an hour or so at the mouth of the river today pondering htis, and watching Iago play in the water.

As a result of our McEmbargo, we have only tentative accommodation plans for the next week. Coober Pedy is all set, but there is a bike race of some description in Alice Springs this weekend and we might be pushed to find anything. I'm feeling confident however that there will be someone willing to let us set up our tent somewhere.

We'll see what happens.

Pictures will have to be updated at a later point.

- Daniel.

Wedding

9/6/2010

Good.

We’ve created a blog.

This is it.

The blog.

We plan to use this blog to let people know what we’re up to, this way we don’t need to contact each of you independently. Efficient.

We got married last weekend, and to all accounts it went well. It’s strange planning an event for so long only to have it pass so quickly. We were forewarned about this and yet it still took us by surprise.

We’ve now been Mr and Mrs Willcocks for 5 days and it feels fantastic.

Right now we’re in Adelaide, having driven about 700 kilometres yesterday. Today we realised that we haven’t planned our trip very well and that travelling with a dog is actually kind of restrictive. Again, we were forewarned about this. And again, it took us by surprise.

So we sat in a McDonald’s today and planned the rest of our honeymoon.

We’ve attached some photos from today taken at Glenelg beach.