We made it!

On 22 December 2008, at 10.30am, the Battered Fish and Barnacle triumphantly drove into Sydney CBD to complete an epic 225 day adventure around Australia. We had made it the whole way around Australia (with the odd detour through the middle of Australia) on used cooking oil, making it to the Eastern, Northern, Western and Southern most points of mainland Australia. We had travelled a distance of more than 36,000 kms, over notoriously corrugated roads, through creek crossings, up and over steep sand dunes, seeing amazing places, fauna and flora and meeting with the characters of the outback. Boy had it been an adventure of a lifetime, one that we will cherish for a long, long time.

Even writing about our trip now, several weeks after the finish date, it has not fully sunk in that the trip is over. It was a huge part of our lives for so long that it is hard to get back into reality. The camper trailer is currently sitting in the drive way with red dust on, itching for its next adventure, and the Battered Fish is being driven around Sydney on waste cooking oil. It is almost as if we are stocking up on food and oil in the City and will be ready to get going on our next leg of the journey in a few days. The reality is, we may be physically and mentally ready to keep on travelling, but we both need to look for jobs!

Since being back in Sydney, we have once again slept in a proper bed, been able to cook using an oven, grill, hob etc, had a hot shower, had drinking water whenever we needed it, used a washing machine and used electricity for lighting. All of this I took for granted before our trip. I never thought I would say this but I am missing the life of camping and having to work physically hard to drink, eat, sleep etc. For example, to cook food, we had to find wood, usually chop this up and then start a fire. To wash clothes, we had to heat a bucket of water (either over the fire or using the solar shower), add biodegradable soap to the water and scrub the clothes clean. To sleep, we had to find a level, shaded area and set the camper trailer up. I can remember during the trip that all of the things above at some point annoyed the hell out of me, for example, in some places you could not find wood for a fire, or other places it rained so hard that the camper trailer leaked. At these times, all I wished for was a warm, dry bed to sleep in and have some home comforts. Now, I am wishing for the exact opposite!

You may have thought, like me, that as we are staying in a house and are in a city, we would have finished seeing "dangerous" animals. This is not true. Only last night, we went around to Gerard's sisters house for drinks and as we arrived, we saw a red back spider on the ceiling inside the house. We had not seen a red-back our whole time on the trip. Also, we found a spider inside the house where we are staying and as Gerard went to move it outside using some newspaper, the spider exploded and around 50 plus baby spiders started crawling around the floor. Further, our brother-in-law went to play golf at a local course and saw two snakes - one in the car park and one on the green! We are surrounded by poisonous species!

Over the next few weeks, we will be slowly adjusting back into life, as well as looking for jobs and places to rent. We are aiming to keep up our camping and go out as much as possible at weekends to National Parks around New South Wales and enjoy basic living once more.

I will carry on blogging about how we are settling into life in Sydney, so stay tuned as the Battered Fish will swim again!

All the best,

Rachel and Gerard x