Get Away

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152 posts

[getaway85]

Bali again… when I booked the flight it sounded like a good idea. But shortly before the flight I was really not so convinced anymore.

I couldn’t think of anything that I’d still want to do in Bali. Lena wasn’t really on my page with what would be fun so I feared it was just a bad decision and a waste of money… basically…

As I didn’t feel much energy my plan was to chill out in Ubud, meet friends and spend time with my guitar.

When I flew to Cairns before bringing my guitar was not an issue at all (Thanks Tiger Air!). So I just brought it to the airport and hoped for the best. Unfortunately I wasn’t this lucky this time. Air Asia wouldn’t allow my 3/4 guitar on board other than to check it in, which wasn’t an option as I only had a soft case. So I needed to leave it! *bummer* On the airport two hours before the flight I was seriously running out of options. I searched for the lockers to keep my guitar for two weeks but knew it would be expensive. So I asked my way through but the price of 120 bugs was what my guitar is worth so I didn’t wanna do that. Luckily I talked to a random taxi driver who said he can babysit my guitar while I'm away. I left my beloved guitar with a taxi driver I never met before. That's how good of a mother I am.

Arriving in Bali even my boring plan didn't work out... I met Brett an old friend from Bali who was still there and friendly enough to spend a lot of time with poor bored Miriam. He also had the idea to buy a guitar in Bali! And I found one for 200.000 Indonesian Rupiah. Which were 20 bug (20!!!).

At the end I also decided to finally get dreadlocks after I thought about it for a while. I spend more time with Lena then anticipated. I learned the guitar and I did some favorite activities like Sauna and eating, I did wild water rafting (with Lena and a friend of her Arnold).

I also kind of spontaneously decided to make a long dream come true and got myself dreadlocks! I did have the idea before and thought if I’d ever do it now would be the time! While the dreadlocks were made in an 8 hour long process the dreadlocks makers (Olive) monkey (Olivia) was entertaining us which was the sweetest thing (although I am aware that “rescuing” a monkey from the black market is the worst and living in a human home is not for monkeys... but I didn’t really feel like loud protests in this situation - what do you think?). The monkey was cute until the dreadlocks came to live and it really wanted to play in them... :-O. We put it to a little out-time on a curtain rail which didn’t help for long as you might imagine. Finally it fell asleep in my cleavage... :-D

So all in all I was quiet happy I came and it was a beautiful way to spend two weeks.

I left my guitar with Brett and he promised to take good care of it!

[getaway85]

TripAdvisor stops sells to attractions that allow direct contact to animals in captivity. This includes swimming with dolphins, elephant riding and photos with tigers!

That's definitely the way to go! We should try to do tourism as much sustainable as possible. Nobody should suffer for our entertainment!

[getaway85]

Darwin

We stayed in Darwin for a couple of days. I used the time to do some bureaucratic stuff in the library and do some sports which wasn’t possible on the road trips.

I also had to stay in Darwin until Julia and Yuri arrived whom I wanted to travel with the next section.

Darwin is small but much better than what I heart about it before. You cannot swim of course because of the crocodiles but it does have a nice lagoon and park. I don’t know why people are so fast with judging a city that badly and even telling people it’s dangerous…

I trusted my feeling and parked my new car in near the middle of the city where it was free to park.

[getaway85]

Cairns to Darwin - Savannah way

Lena and I planned to travel to Darwin together. I thought that would be a full blown roadtrip, but turned out we only took 4 days…

I love being in very remote places: no reception, not many other travelers, pure nature.

The Savannah Way (especially that part of it) was exactly what I love!!! Far less tourists than you’d have on the Gibb River road but just as much fun.

We only met like 5 other cars a day. On the camping grounds we only met one couple ones. The road was dirty, stony and had some rivers to drive through. Of course the as it was dry season the rivers weren’t much of a problem. Still it was cool!

We didn’t stop at many places but we did the bitter springs near Mataranka which was really nice! We also saw dingos which is really rare as they are so shy.

Next time I would definitely take more time. Relax. Enjoy the nature. Camp. Be unreachable.

[getaway85]

Seeing those guys start made me feel really weird. Always surprised it actually works.

[getaway85]

Cairns - Great Barrier Reef - 3 day Tour

I was looking forward to Cairns so much. I wanted to be on the road again. And I was super excited to see Lena. When we were in Perth we had a great time and we stayed in contact via phone.

When I arrived she picked me up from the airport in the car I was going to buy from her.

We went back to town to a caravan park she was currently camping with four other Germans. They were about to wake up and so I met: Nils, Chris, Niklas and Lisa.

They had done the east coast together and planned to do three more days before Lisa and Chris had to return their camper and fly back to Germany. I just came in and joined the group and would later do the trip from Cairns to Darwin together with Lena.

But first we did a three day tour to the Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation. We somehow managed to spontaneously convince Kristin a friend of Nils to come along to the trip and we had a really good time.

I personally just enjoyed the very green vegetation and the warm weather and beaches. We saw some great nature. We discovered the coolest camping spot ever in the garden of an old couple who need 3 days to mow their lawn and had chicken and wallabies everywhere. Their lake supposedly had some crayfish but we didn't try to catch it.

[getaway85]

Short Stop in Perth

We took the road train to Perth!!! It was so cool!!! I’m happy this happened as it was definitely on my list but worth no clear plan on how to actually achieve it. Nathalie and me planned to go down to Perth from Newman with a friend but for some dramatic soap-opera reasons the friend left the Capricorn early and we were stuck. Until we asked the petrol truck driver and he offered to take both of us down to Perth! *dream* The 13 hour drive wasn’t actually that interesting but I just enjoy driving in general so I didn’t mind it at all. A friend of Nathalie was so kind to pick us up from the petrol station outside of town and bring us to our hostel. As after having a place to live in for 2 months (4 months for Nat) we had toooooo much stuff.

We just spend a few days in Perth and I didn’t do much. I visited the art museum (culture!!!) as I always wanted to see it but never did. It was really cool especially the comics that were shown in the changing part of it. I loved Anders Nilsen (sad and touching) and also Stephen Collins was great fun. I met Lauren and Alexandra again who were coming from Newman as well and spend there last days together before Lauren, who I adore, left for Italy.

Other than that it was freezing cold due to the winter with no heaters in place.

Nathalie and me wanted to do the mud race in Margaret river. A friend of Nat was so nice to borrow us his car for the day and we drove down 3 hours and back for just a mud race. Something you wouldn’t do in Germany but makes total sense in Australia.

The mud race was soo cool. We were really lucky with the weather. So it was a warm and sunny day. The obstacles were great fun and I always just wanted to do something to get really dirty. Which we were!!! :-D

After two months with a 8 GB phone I also bought a new iPhone. Just this time it was an old model and used and a step back. Still way better than the Telstra phone. When I flew to Cairns I had to sort out and leave a lot of stuff but it worked fine. I was even able to bring my new guitar on the plane.

[getaway85]

Newman - Activities and Surroundihgs

Besides work there were a lot of other things to do. Even though there was nothing around the roadhouse we managed to entertain ourselves.

First we sold our car, Heidi, a Honda Sedan we bought for 1000$ in Perth for 1000$! That was a success.

Second I ordered a guitar from my first salary as I saw how much free time the job brought with it.

I started watching masterchefs as well which made me really happy! Matt go (he made second place at the end)!

I met a German girl Nathalie who was working in the roadhouse as well and we started working out and running together.

Thankful to her I also met some mechanics who were working in the garage next door and we did some 4 wheel driving (to the eagle falls) and just chilled pizza eating noodles with them as well.

And we went drinking in town three times. One time was very strange and boring and the other two times I was just really, really drunk. A rural town bar as you’d imagine it. Hard to survive ;-)

Hanging with coworkers. We played soccer, guitar, did our hair and other stuff. It was just cool to have people in the same boat. But as much as I enjoyed it a remote roadhouse with a limited number of workers is always a social experiment and after two months it was time to go.

[getaway85]

Newman - Animals Living in the outback also meant meeting a lot of animals. It wasn’t as many as I hoped for.

Mostly frogs, the frogs were everywhere and the main reason for tremendously dirty hotel rooms. They come through the toilet and water ways and the shit all over the place. They also tend to die in strange places and dry out to dark and hard black frog like shapes… It’s a bit of a mess…

We also had a ton of gigantic grasshoppers and spiders. I personally didn’t see many spiders but was part of a killing team once (we panicky sprayed disinfection all over it until it stopped moving *not proud*).

I did also see a baby brown snake which is quiet dangerous as they cannot yet control the amount of poison the use when biting. But luckily it was too short to reach me.

I found a scorpion once in the staff pool but it was already dead and probably not a danger. When we sorted the linen a scorpion was crawling through it as well but no one got hurt.

We also had wild cats on the premises but you could only rarely see them and I never got a picture.

Many birds kept entertaining me but I wasn’t a bird expert yet so I’m not too sure which kind it was.

[getaway85]

Newman - Job

I came to Newman for the work and work is what we did…

Housekeeping is basically cleaning toilet rooms, sorting linen, checking for room keys, providing new extra beds and cruising around the premises in a golf buggy.

The job was hard physically (as you have to be fast and there’s a lot of movement and carrying) and mentally (doing basically the same steps over and over again 30 times a day), but I enjoyed that I didn’t have to worry about money, accommodation nor food. I do enjoy learning as well and we kept Improving our processes and got faster all the time. And I just love a job where I can listen to music all day long! I couldn’t do this forever but for a few weeks it was really nice.

I liked my coworkers a lot and we came along very well. We had a lot of fun even though our bones hurt and the hours weren’t the best.

[getaway85]

Newman - Outback

Debbie and me ended up in Newman and started working early the next day.

I always wanted to work in the middle of nowhere so this job (housekeeping) presented a great opportunity to me. I also don’t mind doing simple jobs for a while and I enjoyed the physical part of it.

We only payed 12$ a day for accommodation and food and earned 22$ per hour. Big time saving!

I got my own room which was the first time in months and was amazing! I really missed privacy.

Also the place was lonely and there wasn’t much to do the pictures above show some of the great nature you could encounter very close by.

Time for relaxing and work...

[getaway85]

Day 22 until end

After Exmouth we made or way to Broome over Port Hedland. There's not too much to see on the way but some really, really nice beaches (e.g. the 80 mile beach) where we relaxed and collected more shells.

We wanted to stay in Broome for a couple of days to relax. But I lost my phone and was pretty depressed over the fact. At the same time Debbie's old boss from Newman asked for new workers and so we decided to declare our Roadtrip finished after nearly one month and drove to Newman in one day and started working there the next day.

[getaway85]

Day 19 to 21

After the day with the whale sharks we packed our stuff and did some more side seeing spots near Exmouth. There was an old abandoned US army station and a pretty boring light house.

So we went on a short trip to the cape range national park on the west coast close to Exmouth. Even though it was quiet late in the day Debbie insisted on doing another hike and after complaining unnecessarily I did enjoy it a lot! We met two German girls that did the exact same walk that I didn't wanna do at all because it was too hot without any water nor appropriate shoes and even took the wrong turn -> way to die in Australia. Go girls! ;-)

On our way back to town it finally happened: we got a flat tyre. We were always wondering when the dirt roads would finally show. So it didn't really come as a surprise. We tried to drive with it for a bit but we weren't sure whether the still to our car attached tyre that slowly dissolved might do harm to the car plus 20 km per hour wouldn't brig us very far. So we decided it was necessary to change it. As soon as we stopped another car was coming behind us and they stopped to ask whether we needed any help. One of the 5 tourists from different countries knew how to change it. After we removed all our luggage from the trunk we found the equipment and the tyre was changed in no time! Thanks to our heroes!

In the evening we met some friends of Debbie in a bar who invited us to stay the night at the house they had rented for a fishing weekend. We ended up staying two nights. We enjoyed the company, hero tales of fishing boat and very fresh caught fish. We ate yellow fin tuna as sashimi and great fish steaks. We cooked together and it felt just like family. It was a great two days!

[getaway85]

Day 18 - the whale sharks

I first heard about the whale sharks in the Philippines but didn’t have the time and priorities to see them there.

So I booked a super expensive whale shark tour with Debbie in Exmouth. While I was really upset about the costs I really didn’t wanna miss this opportunity.

The tour started with a pick-up from our campsite early in the morning. The tour girls were in a really good mood and slowly but surely affected all of us with it. I’d love to be like this when I’m grown up :-D

The bus drive would have been boring but we got a lot of information to use for our own expeditions to Exmouth and its surroundings in the next days.

We finally reached the boat where we got different instructions on boat safety, snorkeling and finally on how to safely and respectfully swim with the whale sharks.

I couldn’t wait!

The first snorkeling was just to test and get comfortable with our equipment. I did my first duck dives ever and was more than happy with the results :-D

When the spotter plane finally spotted some whale sharks we had to be fast. Everybody in board and we drove to the given location. The first whale shark vanished as fast as we were there so we couldn’t swim with it.

But sure enough a second was spotted only minutes after and we drove there, positioned ourselves in line with the other people on board and waited for our chance to see the whale sharks.

The view under water is not very far so when you first see the whale shark it is already pretty close and it is just massive. I didn’t feel fear much as the movement was very slow and seemed predictable. Still I was full of respect and didn’t wanna do anything wrong. It was very impressive!!!

We saw 2-3 more whale sharks and became quiet professional in swimming with them. You could watch them from the side and from behind which was really cool as well. At the end we even saw one from the boat which was really cool as well.

We also saw a manta ray and even a bull shark (although our tour guide ordered is back into the boat as soon as she identified it).

The tour from Ningaloo Discovery was very respectful to all the animals and supported everyone in their experience (people unsure in the water, people with special questions) and I would definitely recommend it with my full heart. It was quiet worth the money!

I enjoyed the day so much and it will always remain in my memory as a highlight of Australia!

[getaway85]

Day 17

We woke up at coral bay by birds sitting directly on the pole next to our tent. We had a very non-roadtrip breakfast from the bakery and chilled on the beach for very long.

While Debbie did sunbathing - I collected shells. We even went for a short swim in the water where I think I saw a ray but wasn’t sure and probably just saw a shadow. After this very relaxed morning we made our way to Exmouth where we directly booked our super expensive (ca. 400$) whale shark tour for the next day!!!

[getaway85]

View this post on Instagram

This moments you’re usually to slow or fascinated to keep on camera… Did it this time. 😍

[getaway85]

Day 16

As I saw a woman in jogging clothes in the evening I figured there must be a jogging path and started a run early in the morning. It was quiet short but I could watch the surfers and enjoy the sunrise.

When I came back to the car my happy face made Debbie’s morning crumpiness even crumpier. She didn’t want to leave yet and so I went for another walk and had breakfast and a shower before we rent to check out.

I drove the way back through the sandy bit of the road trying to do it fast while not killing us and even more dirt road that was less dangerous then it was annoying. We were seriously worried about Heidi and promised her not to use dirt roads in the near future!

We drove all the way through to coral bay, but the camping was full and we only got a spot on the add-on camping space that was basically just a grassy parking spot. We didn’t mind it though as we got rewarded with yet another beautiful sunset!