Camping Van Trip from Cairns to Melbourne (Part 1)

02.08.2024:

I had to wake up at 7 am and check out to be with Aileen by 8:00 am. From there, we took an Uber to the Car Rental Station. By 9:00 am we had our van for the trip to Melbourne. The van is 7.20m long and 3.20m high. I had never driven such a big vehicle before. We picked up some things at the supermarket, and then the trip really began. After a few meters, we already saw a few dead kangaroos on the road, but we didn’t think that hundreds more would come. It felt like every 200m there were run-over kangaroos or emus.
The plan is to cover about 500km per day so that we arrive in Melbourne on time and don’t have to pay a penalty.
Since it gets pitch dark around 6:00 pm and the road becomes too dangerous with all the animals, we need to cover the kilometers beforehand.
When we arrived at the first campsite in Pentland, it was already dark. Earlier, we saw a sign saying “Outback Queensland” while passing by. From this point on, there’s no internet and no signal. Since the Outback came relatively spontaneously for us, we couldn’t download any directions or anything beforehand. We also couldn’t inform family and friends that we would be unreachable from now on. It was a very interesting feeling to know that from now on, we could only follow the signs and our gut feeling. In the evening, we cooked pasta with vegetables and then set up the beds.

03.08.2024:
The night was relatively cold, but I was woken up by sunshine in bed, which was really nice. We made ourselves a delicious breakfast but then quickly drove down from the campsite to cover some kilometers. The fuel gauge showed that we could only drive 200km more, but since the next gas station was 211km away, we had to drive more economically. We barely managed to reach the gas station as we had to search a bit without GPS. Luckily, it worked out because otherwise we would have had to wait for other cars. Very few vehicles drive around in the Outback, so that would have been a real problem.
After refueling, we drove on. The next 5 hours were more than bumpy since the road was just gravel and red sand. We had to be super careful as our vehicle is not suited for such a path and a flat tire would have been a real disaster. We often had to stop because kangaroos, emus, or cows were on the road. When we finally had paved ground under us again, we were very happy. When we eventually arrived in Barcaldine, we had to search for the campsite since we hadn’t had any internet or signal since yesterday’s sign. The road to the campsite was very difficult to find in the dark, but after about 30 minutes we reached the campsite. The stars in the sky felt super close, and I even saw shooting stars.

04.08.2024:

Waking up at 8:00 am, we made breakfast again and then wanted to fill the fresh water tank at the campsite. Sounds easy, but without proper instructions on how to do it, it can lead to problems. Our problem was that we connected the fresh water (and already started pumping it) without turning off the water pump. This meant that our van was underwater after a few minutes. That was the first little shock, as we initially didn’t know why everything was wet. After we managed to dry things a bit, we tried to drain the wastewater. Unfortunately, it didn’t work properly with the hose either, which is why we had to drain it without a hose, which is normally not advisable. After that, we finally drove to a small place called Blackall, as we heard there were public hot showers. When we arrived there, we were super happy because there were indeed hot showers, and we could connect to the free Wi-Fi, which was very important to send a WhatsApp message and look up a route to the next campsite. I never thought I would miss showers so much after such a short time, but afterwards I felt like a new person. After almost 400km, we arrived at the campsite, made some food, and went to sleep at 10 pm so that we could start early again tomorrow to get closer to our destination Melbourne.

05.08.2024:
After breakfast, we set off, grabbed a coffee at the gas station, and wanted to cover some kilometers again.
It rained relatively heavily, so we naturally had to drive carefully and therefore more slowly. Still, we managed to cover 974km today, which is a great achievement, allowing us to drive more relaxed over the next few days. When we finally arrived at the road to the campsite, we realized that the campsite we had chosen no longer existed. What a bummer, because it was already dark and no one wanted to drive anymore. Fortunately, we found another campsite nearby that usually doesn’t allow people in after 6:00 pm. However, since the gate wasn’t locked, we drove in anyway, even though it was already 9:00 pm. Upon arrival, we finally had free Wi-Fi again, which was also running stably.