Musings of a wanderer

So while I was looking for a more permanent job here in Melbourne, I got a job off Facebook as a scare actor at the Royal Melbourne Show. Apparently, the royal show was a thing pre-COVID, and that it was an annual occurrence held at the Melbourne showgrounds (think Singapore EXPO, except it is outdoors, not indoors). This was an 11 day event from Thursday 22 Sept to Sunday 2 Oct. At this point, I'd like to point out the significance of the start dates. Now, you must be wondering, why start on a Thursday and not a Friday or a Saturday even? I'm not sure whether this was pre-planned or it was planned with this in mind, but 22 Sept happened to be a National Day of mourning for the recent passing of the late Queen E. And so that was a Federal public holiday here in Australia given that the Queen (and now King C) was the Head of State of Australia. Thank heavens we are a republic. That weekend however, was an ultra long weekend - because Friday was also a public holiday in Victoria;...

Alright. Time to get down to the itinerary and finances involved for the long roadtrip from Perth to Melbourne. Here's the itinerary. Day 1 - Perth to Margaret River (Busselton Jetty, Ngilgi Cave, Canal Rocks) Day 2 - Margaret River to Albany (wine tasting at Redgate, Boranup forest, Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, Valley of Giants Tree Top Walk) Day 3 - Albany (Albany Windfarms, Sharp Point, The Gap, Cable beach, Blowholes - the little Peninsula off Albany) Day 4 - Albany to Esperance (a not Pink Lake) Day 5 - Camping at Lucky Bay (Cape Le Grand National Park and sights) Day 6 - Lucky Bay to Norseman (last town before the Nullarbor) Day 7 - Norseman to Bordertown (1st half of Nullarbor, 90 Mile Straight, WA/SA border-crossing) Day 8 - Bordertown to Ceduna (Bunda Cliffs, Head of Bight, Whale watching, Port Sinclair Pink lake) Day 9 - Ceduna to Port Augusta (Streaky Bay, Woolshed Caves, Kimba) Day 10 - Port Augusta to Adelaide (Lake Bumbunga) Day 11 - Adelaide to Mount Gambier Day 12 ...

Its been a while since I last posted - a combination of busyness and laziness. I had started on a draft post for our roadtrip finances last week but haven't updated it since. I thought about updating that and posting it but decided against it as quite a lot has happened over the past 12 days and so the executive decision has been made to first post about our time in Melbourne thus far. A month ago in August, I had asked my uncle (who lives in Melbourne) about renting a place here in Melbourne. We wanted to find out whether our budget could afford us a similar accoms to that in Perth. Also, Melbourne being much bigger than Perth, we thought it would be a good idea to check in on where the 'nicer' suburbs were. With that in mind, we went about our housing search. Similar to Perth, our lease duration was not going to be long (6 months - better than Perth though) and so that counted against us. We searched for accoms all over - from FB marketplace (private renters) to domain.co...

We just arrived at Apollo Bay, after entering the state of Victoria earlier this morning. As we come to the end of our journey, I thought I'd write about the one constant over this 2 weeks - Motels and roadhouses. In the past, I used to have the impression that motels are seedy cheap hotels. This is further from the truth. In fact, motels and hotels serve two completely different customer base and therefore fulfil completely different needs. While the concept of motel is something I have somewhat gotten used to having done a number of roadtrips during my holidays, they don't exactly exist in Singapore. Throughout this trip, we have gone through a grand total of 12 different motels/ roadhouses, almost all of which we stayed for a grand total of 1 night. Motels are essentially accoms designed for motorist travellers. These are usually no frills, basic accommodation located outside the town centre, compared to hotels which are almost always located inside or near the centre. There...

We've arrived at Norseman - the last town before the Nullarbor crossing. Before arriving in Australia, I have actually never heard of it. After reading up more about our journey last month, it came to our realisation that this crossing actually requires a bit more preparation than simply turning the ignition key and going. It takes 2-3 days to traverse it and it requires forward planning on rest stops, fuel stops, accommodation stops and of course photo-ops stop. From the last town in Western Australia (Norseman) to the first town in Southern Australia (Ceduna) is a grand total of slightly more than 1200km - almost the equivalent of driving the distance between Singapore and Phuket. The Nullarbor crossing is possibly one of the greatest transcontinental journey and is notorious for its unforgiving landscape. Of course in this day and age, it is a lot easier with paved roads, google maps and 8 roadhouses along the way which means that there is no longer a real need to carry jerry ca...

Day 1 - Perth, Busselton Jetty, Ngligi Caves, Canal Rocks, Margaret River Total km - 340.2km The big day has arrived for us to make the long drive to Melbourne. Honestly, though we were quite excited, there was a slight apprehension given that the total distance driven would cover a Singapore to Bangkok return trip + a healthy amount of change. With oil prices at its all time high a few months ago, this trip will not be cheap. The day was so chosen as our short term lease at Osborne Park had run out. And so the night before, we packed, threw out, squeezed our belongings into Abby. We had lowered the back seat to form a much larger boot. All our stuff just about fit into the entire space behind the front seats. We even bought a blue tarp from kmart to put over all our stuff to ensure that people looking in (enroute) would not know we have brought just about all our possessions in Australia along with us. Coupled with the John Deere cap that my boss at the strawberry farm gave me just be...

I've left my job at the strawberry farm. A few reasons for it - (1) We are looking to do a roadtrip all the way to Melbourne next week and we have to prepare for it, (2) my knees and legs and hands, fingers are killing me. We thought planning for this roadtrip was going to be quite simple. We can plan and stop as we go along. However, reading about it more over the past few days have been quite a shocker. There seems to be quite a lot to prepare especially since we will be traversing the famed Nullarbor Plains. I've been doing some research and this (https://clairesfootsteps.com/driving-across-nullarbor-plain/) has got to be one of the better sites to get some info; I'm hoping to do something similar once I've actually completed the trip (fingers-crossed). Frankly, there seems to be a lot to be done and prepped. At the start of this whole adventure, we had thoughts and ideas on what we were going to do with our vehicle - having a roof top tent for camping, or having a r...