Four nights of free camping

In four different locations. And there will be many more.

I know it's only been four nights, but first impressions are that Australia is a free camper's dream. Yes, there will be special times where we know that we will have to pay for our overnight spot (National Parks?), but most of the time we don't see any need to pay to park somewhere overnight.

You can't see everything!

Australia is almost the same size as the lower 48 of the United States... so when people ask "how much of it are you going to see in ten weeks...?" We reply "not very much".

It took us four weeks to explore South Korea... a country half the size of Kansas! So to see everything we want to see in Australia would take us two years... or more... of steady traveling.

So right now, we're not worried about seeing everything. We know that we can't.

Another battery problem, but then another good day!

Up as usual around 6:30am Saturday morning. Slept fine... no other campers, and no other vehicles... it was an absolutely perfect spot to spend the first night in the camper.

Speaking of sleep, a few people have asked! So here it is.... we did sleep really well. The mattress is just a piece of hard foam, maybe 6" thick. Not even memory foam. I was kind of worried that it wouldn't be good enough, but it seems to be fine. Although yes... it's a little short for me.

First day on the road in Australia

Well, our regular readers do know that we like to travel slowly! So when you see how far we went on our first day, some of you won't be surprised!

But we had a fantastic day anyhow.

We were saying goodbye to our fabulous Aussie hosts Pat and Louise at 9:30am.

May Expenses

Well, hopefully that was our most expensive month of the year done and over with!

We spent $4,967 CAD ($3,680 USD) in the month of May! But, we were also in five different countries and we were on six different airplanes during the month so a big chunk of that was travel and overnight expenses.

Here's how it all broke down...

Next stop... who knows?!

Bundy and Joyce are ready to go! And so are we!

I can't believe it took us about three days to get everything cleaned up and ready to go. We were being pretty fussy though... right down to installing shelf liner (mactac?) on the base of most of the shelves and cupboards!

Almost ready to hit the road!

We're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Spent the morning finishing cleaning up Bundy and Joyce and got the electric systems figured out and working properly. The house battery seems to be fine, and the 160 watt folding solar panel kits works fine as well. Unfortunately, the engine battery did not pass the tests and needed to be replaced.

Our host Pat knows quite a few people in the auto parts and repair business and a few phone calls later got us a brand new battery wholesale for $150 AUD ($140 CAD, $105 USD). I had done some searching and the best I could find was $245 AUD!

Getting Bundy and Joyce ready to go!

Bundy is the truck... a 2008 Ford Ranger 4 wheel drive diesel with 128,000 kms (79,000 miles) on the clock.

Joyce is the camper that sits on Bundy's chassis. She was "home made", but very well made.

Today, we started getting Bundy and Joyce ready to hit the road!

First full day in Australia... running around!

We made a sort of a rough list of things to do, and our host Louise had taken the day off work to run us around. We'll say it again... it has been so great having them look after us on our first couple of days in the country! Thank you so much Louise and Pat!

So we went out to get some things done. We were gone about five hours and I've already forgotten the order in which we did things, but here it goes...

Finally... arrived in Australia!

Bali airport has got to be the busiest airport we have ever been in. The problem of course is that it's simply too busy for the size of the airport. So they've got all of these flights arriving and departing at all hours of the day and night.

Our flight from Bali to Adelaide, Australia was scheduled for 12:05am... at a gate that had three other flights scheduled to depart within a hour or so time frame. There were people sprawled everywhere.