After the last night in our camper (again on a parking spot along the highway), we had to clean the camper, do the luggage and drive to Melbourne in order to return our camper. It figured out to be a not too easy process. The poor guy from the renting company didn’t know anything about our story with the broken cylinder. After he told us in the beginning, not too kind, to wash the car from the outside (what we indeed had to do), we let off steam afterwards and the poor guy got to feel our full frustration. We had to pay 100$ for the broken light, but after a couple of phone calls to the central office, he still couldn’t believe it, but he did pay us over 400$ back (costs for the motel, 2 lost days, one full tank of fuel). At least all worked out quite well, although we lost lots of time.

During our drive to Melbourne, we already organised a lift from Melbourne to Sydney. Louis (from Miami) and Kylah (from Brisbane) rented a camper for 6 people (again a relocation) and wanted to start the next morning. They also offered us to stay the night in the camper, in order to not spend money for a hostel. We planned to meet them directly after dropping off our camper, but we didn’t expect the transport system of Melbourne to be so silly. A genius invented the most unfriendly system in the world for tourists: Melbourne operates only a card system. The card is recharged with money and for every trip you tap on and off. Sounds absolutely amazing (and works also in other cities we’ve been), BUT you only can buy these cards at certain places. Unfortunately, tram and bus stops are NOT one of these places and there is no chance to get a one-way ticket in the vehicle itself. Therefore Tobi had to walk 2km one way to the next supermarket, to buy the cards while Kerstin and Vera were waiting at the tram stop and having an eye on the luggage. So we came way too late to our date with Louis and Kylah (after saying bye-bye to Vera). But both were relaxed by traveling and so didn’t have any problem. They directly showed us our vehicle for the next days. A completely new, huge and luxury campervan for 6 people (80km on the speedometer) supplemented with everything you can imagine (apparently it costs 350$/day if you rent it regularly).

We spent the evening with a little walk through Melbourne, which seemed to be quite nice at first sight. A really comfortable and relaxed atmosphere, a nice pedestrian precinct, nice parks AND OUR FIRST SHOPPING IN ALDI AUSTRALIA 🙂 We directly felt like at home. Of course, we didn’t see too much on only one evening, but we will come back before our flight to New Zealand. Definitely something on which we will be looking forward to.

After the night in the luxury camper in a side street in Melbourne, we started the trip to Sydney. We had four travel mates: Louis from Miami is traveling and met Kylah from Brisbane here in Australia. Both are now traveling together, the next travel destination will be Japan. If Louis will be in Miami in August, we will meet him there again (we’re starting to become interconnected around the worldJ). Julie (franko-german) is on a 3-month-trip along the east coast, the probability is quite high that we’ll cross each other’s ways again! Nick is an Australian art student (they are as many of them as jellyfish in Queensland) and was on his way to Sydney visiting his family for Christmas.

We took the street through the inland, stopping in some beautiful Australian cottages. Every here and then Louis was shouting: “I’m driving a fucking space shuttle”. The camper was enormous and just too big for usual city traffic. We encamped at a lake within a national park in the evening having dinner and a refreshing swim in the lake.

At the next day we hit the road quite early and arrived in THE Australian city (Sydney) in the early afternoon…