The first week of our Australian adventure started out really well. After leaving Melbourne, we drove the Great Ocean Road on our journey up to Alice Springs.
Our first stop was in a town called Apollo Bay, where we went to the top of Cape Otway lighthouse and saw whales swimming in the water.
The next day, we took a windy walk up to visit the Twelve Apostles on our way to Naracoorte.
Once there, I cooked a kangaroo stir-fry for dinner and we ate it with Kalangadoo cider. There was a big jumping pillow there, which allowed us to act like big kids for the evening after a long day of travelling.
The next day, we drove to Adelaide where we stayed for two nights. On the first day, we visited Victor Harbor where we had yiros and chips and discovered the wonder that is chicken salt (seriously, we NEED to get this in the UK!) before taking a walk around Granite Island. We hoped to see some penguins there but, unfortunately, there were none to be seen. Despite this, it was still a really lovely day and the hottest day we’d had since arriving in Aus!
On our second day in Adelaide, we explored the city centre and tried the most delicious salted caramel cheesecake at San Churro. That evening, we went out for dinner at a really cool Mexican restaurant near where we were staying. It was our first dinner out since being in Australia.
After Adelaide, we drove up to Port Augustus, which was a very small town with not much to do. We left the following morning and began driving through the outback for the first time. We drove along Stuart Highway, which is the longest stretch of straight road I have ever seen (2,834km in total!) Despite the prolific littering of dead kangaroos along the roadside, we were enjoying our road trip: taking pictures of the endless desert plains out of the window as we sped by; singing along to our “Cheesy Hits” Spotify playlist and talking excitedly about our plans.
Five hours into the journey, the desert sun had started to beat down on us stronger than it had been when we first left Port Augustus, and so Nick pulled over in order to change out of his hoodie. I was grabbing a drink of water from the fridge when Nick called for me to join him outside. He wanted me to see the vast expanse of nothing all around us and to appreciate the deafening silence. To quote one of the greatest writers of our time (Taylor Swift. Don’t fight me on this.) I had never heard silence quite that loud. It was so peaceful and unlike anything I had ever heard or seen before. We were full of awe and wonder at our surroundings when we stepped back into the van to continue on with our journey. And that was when it happened. It was the thing my Mum had fretted about the most ever since I first told her about this road trip, and every backpacker-driving-through-Australia’s worst nightmare… We broke down in the outback.
If you’ve seen The Inbetweeners Movie 2, you’re probably picturing dramatic scenes of us leaning against our van (that we had only been calling home for a week that day) and accepting our inevitable deaths; the crows circling us as they waited to feast upon our dehydrated corpses, the way we had all too often seen them doing on kangaroo road kill that day. Fortunately, it was nowhere near that dramatic. Luckily for us, the van was still drivable (it wouldn’t go into automatic and wouldn’t go past third gear in manual) and, even luckier, we were only 50km away from the nearest town. We limped our way there (it took us an hour!) and drove straight into the first garage we could find.
The mechanic at the garage looked the van over and gave us some bad news. He told us that there was nothing he could do for us there, as it needed a big city to be repaired. We were told that our best option would be to have the van towed back to Adelaide (850km back the way we had just come!) We went to another garage to get a second opinion and received the same unfortunate news. We were gutted but, after contacting the breakdown company, resigned ourselves to our long return journey to Adelaide with a tow truck driver the following day. But things weren’t going to be that simple.
We were trapped in that small desert town for a total of six days.
The town’s name is Coober Pedy and whilst it would have been a lovely day’s stopover to break up our journey, six days there with no way out began to send us stir crazy. To give you an idea of what this town is like, the Lonely Planet’s Guide to Australia refers to it as a “postapocalyptic wasteland”. Famous for opal mining, it is the “Opal Capital of the World” (which just so happens to be my birthstone). After doing a tour of the mines, we had exhausted its attractions and we wanted out.
Flies invaded our living space and attacked our faces; the wind roared all through the day and night, threatening to throw the van onto its side as we slept; transient travellers traipsed in and out, mocking us in their working campervans. They were always here one day and gone by morning.
There are five good things that I will say about Coober Pedy and these are as follows:
There is little light pollution and so the sky is beautiful and clear at night. Walking around felt like being inside a planetarium.
They have a drive in cinema that played Grease. I have always wanted to go to a drive in cinema and Nick and I promised ourselves that we will go to one someday when we have a car and not a broken down campervan.
It never rains.
There is a kangaroo orphanage opposite the campsite where we stayed. There, we got to feed some kangaroos their dinner, as well as meet a joey kangaroo and a wallaby!
The staff at the Oasis Tourist Park were so incredibly friendly and helpful and didn't mind us spending hours at a time standing in their reception on the phone to the breakdown company, even taking our calls for us when we weren't there and bringing messages down to our van. If you ever find yourselves in Coober Pedy (perhaps you're particularly interested in mining or particularly hate the rain) I would really recommend staying there.
Unfortunately, as we tried to plan our escape, we kept running into more and more complications. There were more than a couple of nights that I went to bed rejoicing to Nick that it would be “our last ever night in Coober Pedy!” But the next day, there would always be a new obstacle to stop us from leaving. Whilst I began to resign myself to our new life in Coober Pedy, applying for jobs in the mines and looking into underground house prices, Nick was glued to the phone of our campsite reception for hours every day, trying to come to some sort of resolution.
It turned out that the campervan’s breakdown policy didn’t cover for us to be taken to Adelaide with it and, on top of that, we were told that they wouldn’t be able to get a tow truck out to us for up to three weeks! Towards the end, Nick was even considering driving all the way back to Adelaide ourselves in third gear, which would have been unbearable. To cut a long story short, in the end we were able to arrange to leave the van at a depot where it could await a tow. This then allowed us to book a Greyhound up to Alice Springs in order to continue our journey without it.
We took the van to the depot on Monday morning, checked into a motel and celebrated our (really, really!) last night in Coober Pedy with a meal of shark and chips, a game of monopoly and beers from the Sip N’ Save. The next morning, we got up at 5:00am in order to board the Greyhound. We dressed in our comfiest and warmest clothes; hoisted our belongings on to our backs and ventured out into the bitingly cold desert morning air.
We had been waiting at the coach stop in the cold and dark for nearly half an hour and had started to worry that it might never show up, when we heard a man’s voice informing someone that the coach had been delayed by an hour. Our hearts sank as we shivered in the cold and windy morning air. Huddled up for warmth, we watched the sky slowly change to daylight, believing that we may truly be cursed to never set foot out of this town again.
Eventually, the Greyhound did turn up – our knight in red, rusty armor, and rode us out of this town. I am sat on its ugly patterned seats as I write this, watching the same desert landscapes fly past; back on the Stuart Highway, where this story started, and hoping that we have had our fill of bad luck to last us for the whole of the trip. It is Nick's birthday today and whilst he joked that he feels he has lost a year of his life in Coober Pedy, and whilst a ten hour coach ride may not be the nicest way to celebrate, I think escape may be the sweetest gift of all. When we finally arrive in Alice Springs, we will be able to celebrate for real - I think we've earned it.
Comments