What do you do when you learn that a Category 4 tropical cyclone is headed directly for the set of islands where you are planning to do a 3-day sailing trip? If you are Lustin — and especially if you are Lustin after just spending three days on a heaving, tossing ocean — you aren’t all that eager to tempt your fate with the seasickness gods again. Nor are you especially excited about sailing around normally sun-soaked tropical islands in the pouring rain. So, you do what any rational person would do — you change the entire itinerary for the remainder of your time in Australia less than 12 hours before your next flight is supposed to take off.
As much as we wanted to see the Whitsunday Islands (which, sadly, did end up bearing the brunt of Cyclone Ului), we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of getting stuck in a fairly remote part of Queensland in the midst of a giant tropical storm. Luckily, we were able to cancel our flight to Hamilton Island and get a last-minute flight from Cairns to Brisbane, a city much further down the east coast and hopefully out of the path of the approaching storm. What we’d do once we arrived in Brisbane was still a mystery — after two months of last-minute travel planning, we hoped the travel gods would once again take care of us if we just let go and let them.
;)
Dusty and the DoctorAnd take care of us they did. We ended up renting a “Spaceship” — basically a tricked-out minivan masquerading as a camper van — to do the 1,000km drive down the east coast from Brisbane to Sydney. We’d seen Spaceships all over New Zealand (they’re owned by the same company as our Stray Travel backpacker buses), and they had recently started to pop up around Oz as well. Our Spaceship was officially named “Cubewano,” a name we didn’t understand (and never figured out), but we came up with our own nickname: Dr. Spacevan (pronounced “Doctor Spuh-CHEH-vin” in homage to one of our favorite TV doctors).
We picked up Dr. Spacevan from the Brisbane Spaceships depot on a Thursday and had to have it back to Sydney the following Wednesday. That meant we had 7 days to drive 600 miles — an average of 85 miles/day — which was exactly the kind of leisurely pace we were looking for. The stretch of coastline we’d be driving down included the famed “Gold Coast” and the utopically-named Surfer’s Paradise (which turned out to be a garish coastal Las Vegas that seemed completely out of place among the otherwise beautiful, chill beach towns along the coast). For the full experience, check out the three albums from our road trip: Byron Bay, Urungu & Port Macquarie, and Seal Rocks & Port Stephens.
;)
One the many seemingly endless beaches along the east coastOur week along the coast wasn’t terribly eventful, but we loved the freedom of being able to go where we wanted to go, stop where we wanted to stop, and know that we could spend the night pretty much wherever we wanted (Australia has a liberal policy of allowing camper vans to spend the night parked just about anywhere). The coastline was truly stunning: seemingly endless beaches (we passed three different beaches named “7 Mile Beach”), gorgeous blue water with sparkling white surf, and miles of green rolling countryside. We were surprised by how rural the drive was — we often found ourselves eating lunch in the only cafe on Main Street in some tiny country town. We drove through exciting seaside metropolises like Yamba (population 1,500), whose official town motto is “Plenty of Shellfish!”, and Repton (population 76), where a raucous Saturday night on the town involved watching a giant lizard eat roadkill in the middle of the road. (Seriously, this thing was HUGE!) We drove through lots of other wonderfully named Aussie towns like Bogangar, Chinderah, Mullumimby, Bundjalung, Yuraygir, Bongil Bongil, Urunga, Buladelah, and my personal favorite, Booti Booti. And we fell in love with a groovy little surfer town called Byron Bay, where we found a campsite right on the beach and spent two days swimming in the cool, crystal clear water, eating in some fantastic restaurants, and where we’re pretty sure we saw a UFO. Seriously.
We wrapped up the week visiting some travel friends of Dustin’s parents — Chris and Raelene Bates. Although Chris and Raelene had never met us, they graciously invited us to spend a night in their gorgeous seaside home. They also made us a delicious home-cooked meal (truly a gift after two months of eating out and cooking quick meals in crowded backpacker kitchens), took us on a tour of the beautiful Port Stephens area, and didn’t bat an eye when we came barreling into their home and asked if we could use their computer, internet, phone line, fax machine, washing machine, and dryer. (Lustin apparently takes “Make yourselves at home” quite literally.) Oh, and somehow in the midst of all this, they managed to make sure our wine glasses were never empty. We had such a wonderful time with the Bates and hope we get to see them again, if only to learn more of Chris’s classic Aussie-isms. (Two of our favorites: “I play golf like a skin diver laying bricks,” and the somewhat enigmatic, “There’s more ways to kill a cat than stuffing a cream puff up its bum.”) Thank you again, Chris and Raelene (and Tia and Brandy), for being such gracious hosts!
;)
Lustin with our incredibly gracious hosts in Port Stephens
In the end, though our road trip with Dr. Spacevan was the result of some last-minute travel improv, it turned out to be the perfect way to end our month in Oz. We drove a total of 1,669km, and almost every one of those kilometers brought something fun, or beautiful, or quirky to look at (who doesn’t want to see a giant prawn on the roof of a restaurant or a sign offering the services of local hobos??). As for the Whitsundays, Fraser Island, and a bunch of other places we didn’t get to visit on this trip to Australia, well, they’ll just have to wait for our next trip to this sunny, friendly island at the bottom of the globe. We can’t wait to come back.