Australian road trip

For the record, and anyone interested, I want you to know that road tripping in Australia was 100% A’s doing. He had the idea, he planned the trip and he booked the car. I did not realize that I was about to get in a car for a total of 21 hour driving (supposedly) with someone who NEVER has driven on the other side of the road. You’d think that little information would have come up at some point but it didn’t…

So, there we were at the Sydney airport, picking up our rental and getting ready to roadtrip. We have, if you remember, road tripped before in the US and yes, that too was a horribly long driving experience but we were both healthy and overtake the car any time the other driver was feeling fatigued. But me being sick, coughing loads and generally just feeling like my body is trying to kill itself (plus mentally not prepared for driving on the other side), was not able to take over driving and A knew that when he booked the rental…

Anyways, so there we were in the rental garage, waiting for the rental when I realized A’s nervousness. He reluctantly admitted to never having driven on the other side and was excited how the next 11+ hours from Sydney to Brisbane were going to go. A said, after all the things he had endured, i.e. the Grand Canyon and snorkeling with dolphins, I know what a horrible monster am I making him go see these amazing things?!, he wanted an adventure of his own.

As if being in Sydney wasn’t adventurous enough… we got into the car and spent the first two hours trying not to freak out about oncoming traffic, which meant a lot of tense anxious conversations in the car. A’s most irritating thing about the left side driving were the switched handles for the turn signals and windshield wipers… He must have cleaned the windshield of nonexistent rain about a hundred times, when really he just wanted to change lanes.

On top of that, holiday traffic was horrible and our initial driving time slowly changed from 10 hours and 16 minutes to about 11 hours and 30 minutes. Meanwhile I felt my health and spirit deteriorate rapidly, while A slowly got comfortable with driving… Eventually we made it to Brisbane around 9 pm (only because we didn’t realize Brisbane was in a different time zone than Sydney and we would have gotten to Brisbane past 10 pm). And we settled in the best place I’ve been to in the last few weeks. We have an amazing view of Brisbane, a king-size bed, laundry facilities and a fully functioning kitchen at less than half of the cost of our original airbnb in Sydney plus no cockroaches (that’s always a plus in my book!).

Although exhausted from the long drive, we are happy and so far loving Brisbane to the fullest. We’ll be here for a couple of days before moving on to Mackay where we will spend about 5 nights before heading back to Sydney. Australia and us didn’t exactly get off on the right foot but slowly and surely, we are falling more and more in love with this amazing country.