DOWN, UNDER, AROUND, BACK
When in Australia, do as the Aussies do — like driving nearly 15 000km around the continent.
THERE’s a group of people of people here in Australia called the “grey nomads”. A large group, in fact — some 80 000 of them — who at any given time, pack up their houses, buy a van and travel the country, sometimes for years on end.
Normally you have to be over 60 to qualify to be a grey nomad. We decided we didn’t want to wait for retirement to enjoy this rite of passage.
We wanted to do it now, with our three kids in tow, and explore the breadth and beauty of the conti- nent, even if it could never hope to compare with South Africa, from where we moved 15 years ago.
“What about their schooling?” I can almost hear the shocked voices asking.
I never wagged (Aussie slang for “bunked”) a day of school in my life in Cape Town and here we were actively encouraging our children — aged between seven and 13 — to skip months of it.
But home-schooling is not uncommon in Australia. A study by Home School Western Australia in 2012 estimated that about 30 000
people were home-schooled nationwide.
That number has increased each year as families get frustrated with the traditional school system and its perceived lack of values.
Many other families have also taken a “gap year” in the middle of schooling and careers to travel Australia in a van.
We had talked about doing it for years. We wanted to see what Australia looked like, if this was going to be home, and that meant exploring the length and breadth of it.
And let me tell you, this country is huge. The total circumference by road is 14 500km, on the longest national highway — Highway 1 — in the world.
But the road is geared for the grey nomads with regular fuel stops, even in remote places, and numerous rest areas. Some even give out free coffee and biscuits.
The other question many people asked was how were we, a barely middle-income family, going to afford it?
That’s the beauty of Australia. You really can live very cheaply here if you are careful.
The major expense of travelling is fuel, which can range from AU$1.30 to AU$2 a litre (about R15 to R23). Fuel prices are set by the service stations and not the government in Australia and can vary greatly from one town to the next.
You can also get away with not paying for a campsite, with “free camps” available at various spots; many guide books and websites will tell you how and where.
While the facilities in these sites are basic, usually little more than a drop toilet and some tables and chairs, they are generally safe.
And you can stay at places like showgrounds and at gun clubs, which offer the comforts of electricity and hot showers at a much cheaper rate than caravan parks — around AU$26 a night.
Many people rent out their homes while on the road to provide travel money.
So, with 12 weeks of paid vacation up my sleeve, we hit the road three weeks ago. Helping financially is the fact that Australia’s generous social security system gives us an allowance every week simply because we have kids. It gives grey nomads a pension wherever they are.
Our initial brainstorm was to travel in someone else’s motorhome using “relocation deals”. This is where you drive a luxury six-berth motorhome from one destination to the next for as little as a dollar a day.
The way it works is that the big motorhome companies, like Apollo and Britz, often have travellers book one-way trips. But they then have a problem to get these vehicles back to base, so they look for drivers, like us, to do it for them. Sometimes they even throw in a free tank of petrol.
We’ve had many holidays like this and the only hiccup is you need to be flexible, because most relocation deals only allow you to book within a week or two of departure.
You also have a limited time to get to a destination — from Brisbane to Sydney it is normally around three or four days — although some give you the option of paying for extra days.
The other downside is you have to find your own way back home.
We reckoned we could travel the entire country using relocation deals, but we decided it would be too difficult for such a long journey.
Instead, we bought a secondhand pop-up caravan and hitched it to our 1997 Toyota Prado.
Our plan is to head from Sunshine Coast, about 130km north of Brisbane on the East Coast, to Darwin in the Northern Territory — a mere 3 400km away.
Then we will travel west to Broome, another 1 800km, and then to Perth, another 2 200km, before heading back home across the Nullarbor Plain, through Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney (about another 4 460km).
It looked so easy on paper, but three days in and I had my first “I wanna go home” tantrum. The pack-up, pack-down nomadic lifestyle is a headache when you are doing it almost every day in 35°C heat.
And as for home-schooling, what was I thinking? Not being in a classroom hasn’t increased my kids’ motivation to learn and I am seriously worried they will be delinquents by the time we get back.
What they are learning though, has to be worth something.
They have learned how to wash dishes (no need at home with a dishwasher) and pack a van in 10 minutes and tidy up (sort of).
And they are learning all about the geography of Australia and discovering the beautiful spots not seen in tourist handbooks or expensive ready-made tourism packages.
We’ve discovered crystal-clear 34°C thermal springs in the middle of the Northern Territory at Mataranka.
We’ve jumped into beautiful rock pools in Litchfield National Park near Darwin and watched a fish eat a scab off my husband’s foot.
We’ve canoed along gorges and we’ve swum with the freshwater crocodiles. We’ve seen crocs catch bats in the wild and had black kites eat food almost from our hands.
We’ve patted kangaroos and wallabies and my husband nearly relieved himself on a green tree frog sitting inside a toilet bowl. We’ve watched a giant turtle lay eggs on a remote beach.
We’ve also been attacked by mosquitoes, sand flies, march flies and every other fly on the planet.
In the three weeks so far, we’ve spent no money on official tours, instead researching online and reading where to go and doing it ourselves for free.
You can do that in Australia, because if you take the wrong route you don’t have to worry about ending up in a dangerous place.
Australia will never be a match for South Africa’s scenery. But the enjoyment and freedom of living on the road was something quite special.