Driving Across Australia: Sydney to Melbourne

**want to read along with some mood music? download 'Sweet Disposition' by Temper Trap and read on!**

Tackling Australia: The OZ Experience Sydney to Melbourne

This is my travel map of Australia- and I'm pretty proud of it! When I first touched down in Sydney I had no idea just how massive the country is...When I picked up this map and started doing the maths for travel distances I almost choked on my coffee (Flat White please.)

After spending the past 4 months in New Zealand (where island hopping is a breeze and one could easily drive the length of an island in a couple days), I naively thought I would be able to tackle the whole of Australia in 2 months...ha ha ha ha, NO WAY! According to my map, Sydney & Melbourne, not even 2 inches from each other, and yet it took me 3 days of driving to get from one to the other!

I had dreamed of diving the Great Barrier Reef, riding camels in the great Outback, climbing Ayers Rock, camping and star gazing in red earth, whale watching in the Southern Ocean, surfing in Brisbane, chasing dingos on Frazer Island, rain forest trekking in the Northern Territory...I wanted it all! But 2 months...no way near enough time to soak it all in.

So I stared at this map, and put my marker to action. I'm running out of money quick, so I started circling places where I had friends with friendly couches to bunk on. Sydney, Canberra, Wollongong, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth...Followed the map and bam! I suddenly had my travel itinerary.

Just to put it into perspective: Australia is the 6th largest country after Russia, Canada, China, USA and Brazil. It accounts for 5% of the world's land area and it is the world's largest island.
To make it more dificult to navigate, is the fact that nearly 90% of the population is crammed in the urban cities which are scattered all along the coastlines. The centre, the heart of Australia is absolute barren desert (hardly any roads exist) where only rugged farmers, cattle ranchers and the indigenous aboriginals feel at home.

I was cozy as, in my cousin's apartment in Sydney (thank you prima Ale!), but after 2 weeks of sleeping in and doing laundry it was time for my ever widening butt to get a move on!

When I was traveling through NZ I came across a tourist bus called 'Kiwi Experience' and learned a lot about the company, the guides and the itineraries. I am happy to report Australia has their very own version called the 'OZ Experience.'

http://www.ozexperience.com/

It's a hop on-hop off tourist bus, and basically it works by buying 'routes.' You pick a starting point and an end point, and depending on where you want to go and how long it takes to get there is the cost of your ticket. The bus stops in certain towns where you can get dropped off and picked up again by any of the next buses driving through (so it's up to you how long you want to stay in these towns.)

The buses run all year round, and drive through each city/town/outpost 2 or 3 times a week. Your tickets are usually valid for a year, so there's really no time limit for your journey, you set the pace. The driver is also a tour guide, and will pull off the road from time to time for a hike, a jaunt, or a tour already included in the price of your ticket.

*Just be sure to be on time for the bus when you're leaving, I had a close call in Jindabyne when I had to hitchhike my way out! --Read "Backpacker Murders..." for the full story*

First stop, Canberra! NO...Sydney is NOT Australia'a capital :)

Canberra's Parliament buildings tour---pretty typical capital tour: government buildings, politics, yada yada yada...even Phil, our trusty guide was bored out of his mind...so we sat down on the lawn (on the roof?) of the parliament house and shared funny stories with our new English friends Dan and Poppy.

Some fun facts I did learn on this tour:

1. Canberra was designed by an American, Walter Burley Griffin
2. Every Australian you meet will tell you not to visit Canberra, as it is unofficially nicknamed THE MOST BORING CITY IN THE WORLD.
3. Sydney, Australia's first and largest city, wanted to be the capital of Australia but was denied on the grounds that it was a city born of convicts.
4. Melbourne also wanted to be the capital on the grounds that it was the home of the Australian establishment and that it was NOT founded by convicts (it was founded by the son of a convict) ...Denied, instead granted the title as "Australian's Shopping Capital," where you're guaranteed to lose all your money and buy jeans that are nearly double the size you're used to in the States...(since when does a size 6 ass translate into a size 10?!)
5. Simply because Melbourne and Sydney would not stop bickering, Canberra was chosen as the capital...the point was to punish the cities and to establish a city that was teasingly in the middle of both. (Whoever thought Canberra was evenly in the middle was a crack that needs to look at a map!..Go Sydney...)
6. Perth--the last Australian state to receive convicts, it is said that most of them ended up working in parliament and business.
7. In 1954 Bob Hawke held (and still holds) the world record for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. He is also lovingly known as Australia's Most Beloved Prime Minister.
8. The first European settlers that arrived in Oz drank more alcohol per person than any other community in the history of mankind.
9. 'Australia Day' January 26th is in honor of the first ship of convicts arriving in Sydney...you really can't beat that kind of national pride.
10. Australia's first police force was a band of 12 of the most 'well behaved convicts.'

Driving from Jindabyne & the Snowy Mountains to Lakes Entrance...

Here's another fun fact, did you know that it snows in Australia?! I sure as hell didn't before I ended up in the Snowy Mountains (aka Australian Alps) where I learned these mountains on average receive more snow than Switzerland!

Pictures here (above) show the drive through Australian bushland...2 days of absolute beauty traveling along 'Baary's Way' backroads from Jindabyne through to Lakes Entrance. 4x4 driving through mountains, outback, bush, rivers, farmlands, plains, drumming along to great music (real bluesy, grassroots Australian folk songs by John WILLIAMSON) and even better company with Phil's iconic 'Can Do' Aussie attitude. Wildlife spottings: wild horses, deer, wallabies, echnidas and grey kangaroos.

Hiking in Wilsons Promontory National Park, Victoria

Wilsons Promontory, the southern most point of Australian mainland, was a fantastic stop.

Incredible hikes along forest, pristine coastlines, mounatins and incredible wildlife spottings like the emus, kangaroos and wombats pictured here. Hiking to a view point we danced in front of the picture perfect lookout over Bass Strait which divided Australian mainland from Tasmania. We lunched here hoping for a spotting of whales, but no luck...instead Wombats!

Fun facts about Australian animals:

1. Wombat poop comes out shaped as perfect squares
2. Wombats are incredibly aggressive, however, apparently not when they're busy eating
3. Wombats can spend 2/3rds of their lives underground
4. When wombats are born they're only the size of a pea and weigh only 1 gram
5. Aboriginals used to eat wombats, but apparently they taste like shite (kangaroos are much more tastey)
6. Kangaroo in aboriginal language translates as "I don't know" which is exactly what the aboriginee said to the white man when he asked "What was that bouncing?"
7. Wombats fall asleep on their sides, but usually roll over onto their backs with their 4 legs sticking up in the air
8. The Inland Taipan has the most toxic venom of any snake, enough venom in one bite to kill 100 people
9. A baby kangaroo at birth measures only 2 cms
10. Tasmanian devils can eat 1/3rd their body weight in a single feeding and have the bite of an 80 pound dog
11. Mama kangaroos can pause their pregnancies indefinitely and even abort their babies if there's a drought
12. If chased, kangaroos kill dogs by luring them to water, and using their paws push their heads underwater to drown the dogs
13. Emus and kangaroos can not walk backwards which is why they're represented on the Australian coat of arms
14. Male platypus has a spine that has enough poison to kill a dog
15. Box Jellyfish is the world's most venomous creature---it kills more people in Australia than the shark, stonefish and salt water crocodile combined.
16. Sydney Funnel Web spider is the world's most deadly spider, known to be able to kill a human in less than 2 hours
17. Even sea shells can get you! The harmless looking cone shell lying on the beach has a critter in it that pushes its tail out and gives you a venomous snap if you touch it!

I have learned that just surviving in Australia from day to day is a true art form. If salt water crocs, sharks, jellyfish, spiders and snakes aren't taking you out, you've also got to battle the environment! (Seriously, why do Australian animals seem to have enough power and venom to kill us 10 times over, and yet have no natural predators?!)

Other Australian killers are rip currents, sun exposure and skin cancer (there's a huge whole in the ozone layer out here), heat stroke and hypothermia are both possible (in the same day!), and of course the crazy bushfires...whole towns become a blaze in minutes since the land is so dry and because the native bush has evolved to encourage fires for regrowth.

Here, finally made it to shopper's paradise, Melbourne! And while my credit card might have suffered a million deaths my short stay here, I was happy enough to be in a city for a while and not worry about what could kill me every time I turned a corner.

Videos: wildlife spottings in Wilsons Promontory; emus and wombats

Stay tuned for 'Driving Across Australia: Melbourne to Adelaide', coming soon!