07.11.19 - Perth/ Gracetown Caravan Park

My alarm clock woke me up at 9:30am.

30 minutes left to pack up my stuff and check out from the hostel. I’m very happy with the way my backpack is organized. Everything has its own small bag: There’s one for socks, one for underwear, one for t-shirts, and one for shorts/trousers... I can easily access a single piece of clothing without causing a huge mess. Comfy!

Managed to get to the reception right on time for check out.

A few minutes later Tommy arrived and I threw my two pieces of luggage into this big ass car.

Oh yeah, about the car:

It’s a Land Rover Discovery 2 built in 2000 (about 300tkm).

It’s a 140hp Diesel and features 4-wheel automatic drive!

He bought it a week ago for 3,2k$ (about 2k EUR). It was really dirty and needed some replacements. He spent another 2k EUR to get it running and build the perfect backpacker car including the following features:

-120x190cm mattress laying on a foldable wooden panel

-plenty of boxes for food and stuff underneath the bed

-rooftop boxes for storage and two 20L gas canisters

-Bluetooth pioneer radio

This car does not only look badass... it comes with SO many nice features!

After Tommy picked me up, we drove to Jeremy, a mechanic who helped Tommy to set up the car and became a friend of his.

There’s still something going on with the V-belt, so he had to replace it.

After the car is fixed, we pulled over for some gas. About 80L went in the tank + 40L for the canisters, making it a total of 120L of Diesel. That’s about 180$ (113€).

Diesel is more expensive than regular fuel over here, but it’s still way cheaper than in Germany.

A liter of diesel is about 1,50$ / 0,95€.

With our tanks filled, we stopped at “Hela master butcher” (a recommendation by Jeremy). This butcher sells German food, especially meat like Wiener, Bratwurst ... Both girls speak German fluently with a lovely German accent. Salty prices though, but definitely worth it (it’s two days later when I’m writing this, and we already enjoyed the sausage 😋).

Food shopping is next! With a few exceptions, the overall living costs of Australia are about 1.3-1.5 times higher than in Germany.

They have Aldi here as well, which offers the best prices in our opinion.

We filled our shopping trolley with loads of veggies, sauces, pasta, rice, flatbread, and a little cooler (see photos for prices).

We sorted the food into the storage boxes underneath the bed. Everything got in nice and smooth. So happy!

Let’s go south!

Our plan was to meet up with friends of Tommy who are already around Margaret River. An area located about 300km south of Perth.

Nature changed a couple of times as we were driving south. Sometimes it’s really dry, red sand, and less colors around. A few minutes later, it becomes more green.

We met with the other guys and reached the nearest campsite - Gracetown caravan park - at about 6pm. Luckily, spontaneous check-in without a booking in advance was possible, easy peasy.

Even though it’s late spring, the temperatures vary a lot here in Western Australia. During the day, it’s between 20-35C, and at night, it’s between 10-15C. As soon as the sun’s gone, the temperatures drop quickly.

That’s why we started preparing dinner immediately as soon as we reached our spot.

After dinner, we had a shower and went to bed early... except me because I was still not used to the new timezone and had to write a new blog entry for the day before 😄

Never mind!

Cheers

J