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Depressing. The final post of my travels. Here goes...

We decided quite early on that the only way to travel Australia was by automobile. Couldn’t afford a camper van so instead bought an Australian love wagon known locally as the Holden Commodore. It was a massive V6, 3.8 litre beast and filled with all manner of goodies like a tent, boogie boards, gas cooker, fishing rod, cups, cutlery etc. Since one nights accommodation in Australia worked out about the same price as ten nights in Vietnam, we decided that camping was the only way to go.

Orlando and I aren’t really outdoorsy types. We’re city people and leaving us in the wild is basically a death sentence. This was proven on our first few nights camping when we ventured in to the depths of north east Australia to a place called Cape Tribulation. We arrived after dark and after 20 minutes of struggling to put up the tent, we realised that we were way out of our depth. Luckily, some rather efficient Germans came to our rescue and put it up for us before leaving us to our thing. We were pretty hungry, and I just about managed to get the gas cooker working. We cooked some eggs for about 15 seconds before the flame went out. The next ten minutes were spent trying to relight it. The last thing I remember is Orlando saying “do you smell gas?” before pressing the spark and being engulfed in a massive fireball in the middle of a rainforest. I lost almost all the hair on my right leg in that incident, and my eyelashes still feel a little chargrilled. Orlando escaped unscathed thank the lord. The Germans, who already thought we were uber plebs, must have thought we were complete chumps after hearing the hysterical screams.

Since then, I have had a real phobia of that bastard gas cooker. We also nearly starved on that night because we had loads of raw food and nothing to cook it on. Orlando and I ate the semi-raw eggs that we had kinda-cooked but we were still damn hungry. Orlando reached a new low when he invented a sandwich that I probably wouldn’t eat if I were about to die. Take some bread, add some tomatoes. Finish with tomato ketchup. Bon apetite! That night, I went hungry.

Onwards. The Australian portion of our journey is also where we have become the most shcummy. We have lived extremely rough and scraped the barrel in every respect. After realising that putting up the tent every night was fucking boring, we discovered that sleeping in the car was surprisingly comfortable! We simply put the driving seat and passenger seat fully back, slapped on some insect repellent, lowered the windows and just went to sleep in various car parks, national parks and lay-bys across the country. We liked to describe it as business class. This was quite fine at the start, but after a week or two, the car began to reek. The main reason for the stonk was that the meat that was kept in the cooler had sunk into the ice, and the ice melted. The ham juice soaked into the seats one time after turning a corner too quick and the cooler falling over. We were also warned by numerous authorities and woken at various points during the night by the po po who told us that we weren’t allowed to sleep in a vehicle and got us to move on. Whenever we found ourselves in the sea, we’d often look around and if the coast was clear, rub ourselves down in the largest au naturale bath there is. The best way to describe Orlando and I’s new smell was sweaty meat and may have contributed to our continuing lack of sexy time.

Australian animals are a good laugh. During our trip we avoided running over the stupid roos who jump out of everywhere. I didn’t (couldn’t) however avoid running over a number of 10 foot snakes who were unavoidable after stretching across two lanes of country road. The first time I ran over one it was a bit of a shock and I may or may not have screamed. We reversed back cos Orlando accused me of seeing things, and there it was- the snake just limped back into the bushes and that was that. My favourite animal by far though is the Koala. Did you know that the reason they are so lethargic is because they eat Eucalyptus which is poisonous, so all their energy is spent digesting their food giving them a stoned/sleepy appearance!? My blog is not only amazingly entertaining, but packed with fun facts! They are very soft, cuddly and pretty stupid but all the same, have become my new favourite animal (after Douglas of course).

We’ve done shit load of other stuff. Sailing in the Whitsundays and of course the epic Fraser Island 4-wheel drive camping trip (shout out to team rubbish woooo!). I’ve also had to put up with 3500km of Orlando singing along to almost every song- you’d think that not knowing the lyrics or the tune would be enough to stop him, but instead he just groans along. We went to Nimbin; a hippy town where you can buy all manners of drugs. We bought some hash cookies before going to see that new Disney film Enchanted as we thought it might be quite funny if we were high. Turns out, we got sold duds and had to sit through 2hours of absolute pappety pap. We also saw the Golden Compass which I liked and made me think that if Orlando had a daemon it would most definitely be a koala. We also went to Ramsey Street, Steve Irwin’s zoo, got merked by a number of waves along the coast, saw a turtle giving birth, went to the Bundy rum factory, Blue Mountains in the fog, New Years in Sydney and got hammered in every town along the way.

I must give a big shout out to the various people we have crashed with on the Australia stretch. Reubs, Tim and Dave in Sydney- you guys RULE! The Harrisson family in Melboure, and also Kristen, Charlotte and Chris Shirbin who looked after us good innit. And finally, Theo and co for welcoming us at Christmas. I’d also like to thank the youth hostels of Australia after scamming as much free shit out of you without parting with a single dollar. BAM! I leave you with the following message: Super walls are not cool. Neither are entourages, vampire slayers, zombies, ninjas, pirates and werewolves. Those who pollute their profile with so many apps that my computer starts to cry need to join the idiots on MySpace. It is also not acceptable to access facebook on your mobile. Amen.

EMPLOY ME!!!!


Posted by Will Ryan under the category Travel.
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