26.03.-31.03.18 Arrival in Perth, Australia - Roundtrip West Coast

On the plane to Perth, I met two Australians, Sharol and Mussab. Both had also been on vacation in Malaysia for a few days separately, they are both from Perth. The flight was very amusing, we talked a lot and laughed a lot. So much so that a fellow passenger asked us to keep it down. 😂

I told them that I don't really have a plan for Australia yet. I know that it is very expensive there and I have to try to travel as cheaply as possible. 🙈 I told them that I could stay in Australia for up to a year, as I have applied for and been approved for a Work & Travel visa for Australia as well as for New Zealand. 👌

I took it all in stride and joked that maybe I'll just rent a bike first to travel cheaply in Australia. We all started laughing hysterically. 😂😂😂

I told them that I will first travel the West Coast with an acquaintance for a week and then, for fun, I will probably end up living on the street because everything else will be too expensive for me. 😅 They laughed again. 😃

But seriously, it is really tough when you come from Asia to Australia. Whether it's the cheap accommodations, cheap cigarettes, or cheap transportation options, everything is now 100 times more expensive. 🙈🙈🙈 Australia is really expensive compared to Asia. 😅😃

Actually, I'm not really in the mood to work, but if I want to stay in Australia for a while, I know that I definitely have to!!!

That's why I was also considering whether I should leave Australia again before and only come back to the other side in the East to Sydney later, as my parents will soon go to Thailand for 2 weeks and a friend will soon be traveling in Asia for a while, so I had a lot of options and everything was open to me. 😃

To work and earn money here, you also need a tax ID to pay taxes, as well as an Australian bank account where your salary will be transferred to. It takes about 4 weeks for this ID to be sent to an Australian address. 🙈🙈🙈 Unlike Germany, here in Australia your deducted taxes for the pension insurance are transferred to a separate account, when you leave Australia, you can get the money back, but you have to apply for it. I had already inquired and read about it before. 👌😄

But now the trip along the West Coast was coming up. I had a few days to think about what comes next for me after that. 😅🙈

When I said goodbye to the two on the plane, we exchanged our contact information and Sharol offered me that if I don't know what to do after my trip, I can stay with her for a few days and take care of her dog when she's away.

Yippee, so I already had an emergency plan when I returned from the trip. 😁👌I was very happy about her offer. 🤩🤩🤩

When I was at immigration at the airport, I had to answer a few questions and they searched my very tidy backpack. 😅😂

When I was outside, I waited about 20 minutes until I was picked up by Daniel and his friend Giorgio, who lives in Perth.

They dropped us off at the rental station. The original plan was to rent a van, but we would have had to book a flight for that because the deal was from another location and that wouldn't have been really cheap either.
So we rented an SUV directly in Perth. Unfortunately, this one didn't have the option to fold the seats completely, as we wanted to save costs by sleeping in the car. So we canceled this booking as well.
After 1 hour at the airport, I found another SUV that was foldable and cost us about $50 per day, which is still cheap here.

We then drove to Belmont to Giorgio with the SUV. We even borrowed camping equipment (camping chairs, a gas stove, dishes, cutlery, and large couch cushions to sleep on) and didn't have to buy them ourselves for the week. 👍

After having lunch at the Thai restaurant, where I had Pad Thai for 8 euros instead of 80 cents in Thailand 😅, we went back to the apartment to freshen up and pack our things into the car. In Perth, it was only 18 degrees and rainy. The winter is starting there now. 🙈

On the way, we stopped at the supermarket to buy provisions for the first few days. I felt sick when I saw the prices for the groceries. 😅🙈 I just bought bread and pasta. 😅😂

Our first stop was Lancelin. In Australia, it gets dark shortly after 6 o'clock and it is too dangerous to drive through the Outback in the dark, so we parked somewhere remote and spent the night there.

The next day, we explored Lancelin, a small town with a beautiful beach.


Then we continued north to Jurien Bay, a snorkeling spot. That's where I saw my first kangaroo. 😍 When we were cooking our lunch a bit off the beaten path, we met Mike. He asked us if we had about 15 minutes to spare today at 6:00 p.m. to do a trial run for the voluntary emergency service. Daniel had actually canceled because we didn't have much time there. But I thought, it's only 15 minutes and it serves a good cause, so I said yes anyway. My task was to play dead for 15 minutes and they would test their response on me. 😅🙈 Daniel just had to answer a few questions.

So we waited for the call in the evening. I lay down on the grass next to the road and played dead. Then they came with sirens on and the trial run started. I tried my best not to react and took my role very seriously. ☝️😄

When they tested my reactions and measured my pulse, and tried to talk to me, I still remained motionless and didn't react. People passing by were worried and asked what had happened. 😅🙈 I was really good in my role. 😄

Then they put me in the recovery position, lifted me onto a stretcher, and took me to the ambulance to measure my blood pressure, then it was almost over.

They tried to talk to me again, but I still played dead. Until I heard Mike's voice and he told me I can open my eyes now, the test is over. 😃

They praised me for playing along so well. 😅😃

We spent another night there. But this time we had to stay in a campsite and not just by the road because rangers search the entire area for illegal campers and you have to pay a high fine if you get caught. So even though we were traveling in a car, we had to pay almost $40 just to be allowed to stay there. It's really crazy. 🙈

The next day, we continued north to the best spot, Eymouth. Since it was a very long way and we couldn't drive at night, we stopped about 600 km away to spend the night in a camp in the Outback.

And then we continued again. We spent most of the time in the car just to get from A to B.

1 week to drive up the West Coast was and is very ambitious. 😅

Arriving in Exmouth, we drove to the Cape Range National Park. It was very beautiful. There were many small beaches there, one after another, each one a bit different, and some were great for snorkeling. 😁👌

We spent the afternoon at one of the most famous beaches - the Turquoise Bay. It was incredibly beautiful. 😍 It was also cool that you could glide along the beach with the current. 👌😁 You just had to swim against the current towards the beach at the end, otherwise you would have ended up in the open sea. 😀 That wouldn't have been fun. 😂😂😂

The next day, we visited the best beaches and then unfortunately had to head back around noon.

On that day, we only made it back to the camp in the Outback, then it got dark again. The next day, we left at 7:00 a.m. and by 2:30 p.m. we were back in Perth.

So if I drive up the West Coast again, I will definitely do it with more time. Most of the time, we were just in the car, driving from A to B, and only made short stops at the most famous hotspots because there simply wasn't enough time. There is so much more to discover and beautiful places to see there.

Overall, the distance from Perth to Exmouth in the north was 1,300 km. 😄 Now you know what kind of distances these are here. 🤣 Even 100 km is a joke, which we actually already consider far in Germany. 😆😆😆 And after this trip, I have a different perspective on distances than before. 😃👍

Arriving in Perth around 2:30 p.m., I was dropped off at Sharol's place. :) A few days earlier, I had texted her again just to be sure, and she gave me her address, so I knew it would really work out. ❤😁

Sharol wouldn't be back until the evening, so she wrote to me where I could find the keys to get into the house. When I arrived, there were 3 notes on the table and a phone that I could use for free. She wrote to me that I should make myself at home and wrote down a few things in the area that I could visit. I was also allowed to use her bike. 😄👌 It was really great to be welcomed so warmly. ❤

I got along well with Roman, her dog, I played with him and took care of him, and we became good friends right away. 😄😁👍