3.1.19 From New Zealand to Australia

3.1.19

Normally, I could sleep in, but I woke up early again. So, I had my last cereal and coffee, cleaned up the final mess, disposed of the garbage, and at 12:00 I drove over to Wendekreisen and returned the camper after 2,961km and a total of 286,500km.

During the handover, I complained about several things. First, the refrigerator didn't cool properly (at first it didn't cool at all, then everything froze, and later the milk kept going bad because it wasn't cooling anymore). There was also the issue from the beginning with the blown fuses (which continued to happen). They were kind enough to refund me a daily rate of $149. I took the opportunity to visit the Wendekreisen office, which wasn't busy, and inquire about camper alternatives for my next trip. There was a Toyota in the budget category in the yard. Those vehicles are just (even) older and have more than 400-500,000km on the clock. But as long as the engine runs, I don't mind. Toyota is definitely better equipped in terms of engine power compared to this terrible Mazda. Now, for the coming winter/summer, I only plan to visit the North Island, where there aren't as many mountains as on the South Island. However, having a vehicle that is not the slowest at every intersection would be better. The old Toyota also has air conditioning in the driver's cockpit, which the Mazda didn't have. Unfortunately, the old Toyotas only have wind-up windows. That's something that bothers me, but not as much as the poor condition of the Mazda's engine. The Toyota model would be about $20 cheaper per day than the "more modern" Mazda. So, I had them print me a quote since the travel days will be pretty much the same as this year.

Wendekreisen takes me to the airport where I can drop off my bag. With all the winter jackets that I won't need again until I'm back in Germany, it now weighs 22.8kg. I bought a ticket with Air New Zealand for the flight to Australia, which allows me a baggage allowance of 23kg. That's why it never made sense to me that I had a much higher allowance on the Air China flight. Because neither the Auckland-Christchurch nor the Christchurch-Melbourne flights are included without hefty surcharges.

The flight to Melbourne takes 3.5 hours. I have a row of seats all to myself and a great view from the window of the Southern Alps that we are crossing. There is a screen in the seat and even food and drinks are provided. I watch a movie about the massacre in Aramoana, which happened near Dunedin. I had never heard of it before, and it was really creepy. A resident of the village took the village practically hostage overnight in 1990 after a dispute with a neighbor and killed 13 residents. Scary.

We land in Melbourne at 5:30pm, almost 30 minutes earlier than planned! I think that's cool because I have to be at my bed and breakfast by 9pm and I have a drive of just under 2 hours. However, what follows is more like something you wouldn't believe. While people of various nationalities (including Czech, Polish, Italian, Brazilian, Russian, Danish) with machine-readable passports were able to pass through immigration in 3 minutes, Germans have to join a line for a manual inspection. I am pretty much the only German who arrived on this flight. Unfortunately, a flight from Korea arrived at the same time, and I have about 300 Koreans in front of me who also have to go through immigration. After about 1.5 hours and several emails exchanged with the bed and breakfast owners, informing them that I don't know if I will make it by 9pm, I finally reach the baggage claim. I am so frustrated.

Next, I go to the SIM card shop. The guy there wants to tell me some stories, but I cut him off and buy a Lebara card for $15 with 35GB - I've never had anything like that before. They use the Vodafone network, and now my phone becomes a tethering hotspot for me since I don't need to buy another card for my tablet with the data volume I have.

Now I have to call the car rental company to have someone pick me up. East Coast Rental - hmm, what could that be? I booked it through Billigermietwagen.de and thought: Okay, it should be fine. And it is. Because East Coast Rental is the Australian representation of Sixt. The shuttle stops at the domestic airport, which is a few meters away because it's dropping off passengers there. So, this went super quickly compared to the immigration process. I'm at the car rental agency in 10 minutes and (unfortunately) get a pretty big white car. The lady there is really nice and tells me that Geelong, where my bed and breakfast is located, is only 50 minutes away because there is now a freeway leading there. It's strange that my mapping apps didn't show that. Thanks to my generous data volume, I pull up Google Maps and there really is a 1-hour route via the highway. Great. Along the way, I absolutely have to buy water because I'm incredibly thirsty. I finally set off from Melbourne at 8:10pm. Just before Grovedale, I rush through a supermarket, buy 8 bottles of sparkling water, 1 beer, and a 4-pack of Bundaberg soda. I could bathe in all of it at once. I finally reach the bed and breakfast at 9:10pm. It's located in a residential street, not signposted, and if the landlady hadn't happened to be in the garden, I probably wouldn't have dared to ring the doorbell as there was no house number displayed outside...

Unfortunately, the cat just peed in (my) guest room "she never does that!" - oh well. Doesn't matter. The whole house smells a bit like damp rags, and although the people are really nice, it's a bit too much of a family atmosphere for me. The bathroom is the family's bathroom, and the toilet is behind the laundry room. There won't be any breakfast because the people leave for work early, but I can just help myself from the fridge. Uh, okay -. We chat for another half an hour standing in the living room, I get handed 2 glasses of cider, and then I fall into bed. I leave my bag closed. There's a big spider crawling on the wall behind me. I set my alarm for 6am.

In my preparations for this trip, I had actually reserved a hotel in Apollo Bay for 3 nights starting today. I couldn't cancel tonight's reservation anymore when I realized that the car rental companies don't provide coverage for wildlife damage at night or in low light conditions. However, the trip to Apollo Bay would have taken me a total of about 3.5 hours, including 90km on country roads towards the end, in the dark. That was too risky for me, so I booked a room in Apollo Bay, which is practically waiting for me for breakfast. Tomorrow is supposed to be 43°C, so an early start is a good idea anyway.

Now I have a time difference of 2 hours, so 6am feels like 8am. So, eyes closed and tomorrow will be a new and better day.