Roadtrip 1.0

Where: Roadtrip along the westcoast of Australia
How long: 18.11.-20.12.2019 (almost 5 weeks)
Travelbuddys: Angelique, Chloe, Sarah
Nationalities travelling together: French, German
kind of travelling: roadtrip with a van

My Team and our car  

Due to the short time that we are available (me 12.11.-26.12.) we had to think about buying or renting a car.
We all met the first time in Perth three days before we started our trip, so we decided to rent a car, that we don't need to calculate time to sell our car we might have bought.

Different nationalities might have different understandings of a roadtrip. But we are all backpackers, so we had roughly the same idea of travelling.

First time shopping for "living in the outback"

How did we figure out what we want to see?

The main help that we got was from the App CAMPERMATE. This App is made for travelling in New Zealand and Australia. It tells you all important information backpackers need. Not only spots to go, also things that we have to look for if you live "on the road".

Things we had to look for (almost) every day that are quit natural if you live in a house:

- toilet
- shower (hot and cold)
- water (drinking, and for our water tank in the car)
- Laundry
- place to sleep (if possible for free)
- plugs (for charge phone, lap top, power bank, camera, head phones,...)
- wifi
- petrol station (almost every day due to long distances of driving)
-...

Another helpful App is fuel map. It shows you the different prices for petrol that you can find your cheapest station to fill up your petrol.



Things that are faszinating on the west coast, even if you spent time in Australia before going to the west coast:

- towns are called cities even if they are pretty small. But they are big for the western side of Australia. A lot of cities or towns are just a Roadhouse or/accommodation. The biggest city is Perth (2,06 million citizens =79% of western Australia's population). 92% of western Australian citizens live in the south west corner of west Australia.

- it's really really hot and no wind makes it even worse. The car stays hot and food is dying in the cupboard because of the heat.

- there is actually wildlife in Australia. We drove during sunset a few times and even that we would be covered if we would have an accident with a kangaroo we drove only 40 km/h that we can stop in an emergency.

- mining is really really big business in Australia, especially the west and south west of Australia is full of mine sites.
The state west Australia hosted 127 principal mining projects and hundreds of smaller quarries and mines in 2017-18. The principal projects produced more than 99 per cent of the industry's total sales value.
Iron ore, Gold, Nickel, Alumina, Zink, ... Mines can be found in the Inland or outback.
2017-18 mining had a value of $88 billion. 

- service is really bad in a lot of parts in western Australia. I had only service in Perth and sometimes on the coast, but no service at all in the Inland. Other providers are better but still struggling.

- the flies are really mean. There are not only thousands of them, furthermore they go everywhere they want to. So we had to buy a fly net to cover our face. We couldn't figure out, what attracts them... We had the feeling that they love sweating people the most. So we tried to keep ourselves as tidy as possible.

- the distances between the "cities" are massive. Two days of 8h drive each and not even reached a big town, only Roadhouses and petrol stations. Also not a lot of changes in the landscape.

Wildlive camping