Hitting the road on your own is a daunting experience, let alone when you are in a foreign country with long lonely distances such as Australia! Gianluca Silver, a Coseater who has been backpacking Australia, shared his experience with us.
Written by Gianluca Silver
Someone said that every good story starts with a drink..
In my case, I was totally sober, but I'm sure that I gathered one more good story to tell my grand kids (when I will finally have some obviously).
I was in Cairns looking in vain for some farm work. After one week, I was just extremely bored and wanted to make my time on this planet worth more than staying stuck, sitting on my butt all day long.
I've never consider relocations before, mainly because I mostly travel alone, and I didn't really know how the process worked. In one of those moment of pure madness - created by my butt getting flatter and flatter - I grabbed my phone, checked my bank account, made sure that I had at least $1500, typed "relocation" on google, clicked on the apparently most reliable website, coseats.com, (which I can now confirm that the process with Coseats has been extremely pain free, smooth and pleasant) and looked at the available destinations from Cairns.
Next thing I know, I was hitchhiking from Tully to Cairns to go fetch my "van" the morning after.
I have to admit, I was a little afraid at the beginning..
Drive a van?
On the WRONG side of the road? (LOL)
Alone?
For 2500km from Cairns to Alice Springs with a shaking bond of 1020$ that I would lose in case a Kangaroo would decide to commit suicide? |
| Click here to see available offers |
When I arrived at the Britz office I had been told "uh wow, you got an upgrade..you don't have a van anymore..." and I was showed a monster of a van- 7m long and 3m high! Now I'll let you imagine my "happy face"...but I swallowed the news and I recollected my guts.
Long story short, after the first 32 seconds of driving in fear, I ended up driving for 4 days and a total of 2550km.
I LOVED IT.
I was able to sleep, ALWAYS, away from civilization - never stopping in a market, in a hotel or in a roadhouse, because I had a HOUSE with me. I had been driving about 700km per day and it's wasn't hard at all. I simply loved my experience with "my" campervan!
It deserved 4 pages on my personal diary and a nice memory in my heart. I don't think it's going to be the last one...
..to be continued next time.
Share with us what you found daunting about your experience by commenting below.