First farm and car purchase

Blog 2

After almost two weeks, we are checking in again from the other side of the world 🗺.

Arrived in Melbourne, and first slept through a whole long day, the jet lag had taken hold of us so much... Feeling somewhat better, we first looked for a familiar local Aldi for some sustenance. 🛒 We were surprised, although we knew that prices here in Australia 🇦🇺 are significantly higher than in Germany 🇩🇪. But a pack of cheese for breakfast doesn't come for less than 5 Euros here... There is no proper bread, unfortunately, but eggs and toast did the job for now. 🍳 🍞

Naturally, we first looked for a beach 🏖 since at a pleasant 25 degrees, that was the best place to be.

In the following days, we explored Melbourne. Unfortunately, we had seen so many cities in the past few days that we were looking forward to the real nature and the real Australia 🐨 🌳.

Shortly after, we also went to our first farm 🏡 , which was an hour away from Melbourne. Through the Helpx website, we get accommodation and meals in exchange for 4 hours of work per day. When we arrived, we were just so happy to finally see some fields, forests, or simply something rural. We immediately decided to do some work and had the pleasure of digging up a field in the scorching midday sun at 30 degrees ⛏.. But it didn't matter to us because, as I said, we were just happy to be out of the city.

We were lucky because our hostess was a trained chef 👩‍🍳, so we had really delicious dinners 🍴 🥘! One afternoon in the woods, we also saw our first kangaroos, albeit from a distance, but it was still very exciting 😍.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much else to see in the area, and the nearest train or bus stop 🚏 was 10 km away. Furthermore, our hosts turned out to be real monsters. It wasn't personal or nice at all, unfortunately, just complaints and bad moods. 😐 We knew we would only be doing the dirty work, but being taken advantage of like this made us a little sad. After a few days, we felt so uncomfortable that we decided to leave. 🚶🏽‍♂️🚶🏼‍♀️ There was nothing holding us there in the end. So we found a hostel in Melbourne to look for a car 🚙. Luckily, a German mechanic who now lives in Australia helped us with that. At least he could check if everything was okay with the cars during the inspections. So we were looking for a wagon where we could put a bed in the back because that would be our home for the next few months. 🛏 Unfortunately, we spontaneously changed our travel route and decided that it wouldn't be the East Coast after all, but the West Coast. According to many testimonies we received here, we liked the destinations on the West Coast much better! Because apparently, you can only experience the "real" Australia on the West Coast. The problem was: a wagon wouldn't be enough there, as many national parks can only be accessed with a 4WD, a car with all-wheel drive... Somehow we were plagued by bad luck those days, because every time we made an appointment with a car seller, we received a message 2 hours before the meeting that the car had been sold. 😑 That happened to us at least 6 times, so we extended our stay at the boring hostel every day... And on top of that, an ATM swallowed Jan's credit card, and fortunately for us, the banks no longer return foreign credit cards 💳.

Well, we didn't give up and kept searching, but we kept having bad luck. In Melbourne, there is simply too much demand from backpackers looking for a campervan or similar. So one day, we went further out with the train to look at a car, and what happened when we got there? The car had been sold. According to the dealer, it was sold to two Germans, whom he thought were us...

We were really desperate, so we prayed that the next car would finally be the one🙏🏻. And on the same day, Jan spontaneously discovered a car on the internet that we could also quickly inspect, and even our mechanic said he had never seen this model in such good condition before. 👍🏻FINALLY! We liked the car so much that we took it. 🤝 We are now proud owners of a V6 Mitsubishi Challenger. Funny thing was, we "prayed" for a decent car before seeing it. And the seller of the car is originally from Jerusalem and will soon be going back there. 🙏🏻

We have spent the last few days registering the car, getting camping equipment, and building a bed in the back of the car. 🛏🔨🚙 We also had to get used to sitting on the right side of the car as the driver, driving on the left side of the road, and generally adjusting from a small Golf 4 to a large SUV.. 😀

It took us a few days to turn our car into a home, but it all worked out, and we also survived the first night very well. 😴🌙

Now, for Christmas 🎄, we want to head towards the Great Ocean Road, hopefully spending the first Christmas on the beach 🏖 and in the sun ☀️. I will report on how things go for us.

Marie + Jan