Australia day 1

27 June 2011

Check-out time at the Aaron Hotel was 10:00 AM so we had much to do before this hour arrived. I headed for McDonald's while Razelle packed. I originally planned to take public transportation to the camper rental place, so I sat at McDonald's surfing for information on Perth's transportation system. I wrote down the bus routes and numbers. I also posted the previous blog entry, checked my email and logged into our bank's website to see if we were still living within our means. In the end, it made more sense to just take a cab to the rental place. Good thing, too. The whole process of paperwork and formalities took around an hour. Razelle and I threw our worldly possessions into the camper and started out.

Driving a manual-geared over-sized vehicle on the other side of the road was so much sensory overload that I was afraid I'd overestimated my own abilities to adapt. On at least three occasions I had a lapse of judgment that could have ended the trip dead in its tracks. It took the two of us to keep the craft within its lane and pointed in the right direction (I had a tendency to drift too far to the left and I even hit the curb once, after which Razelle kept reminding me, "more to right, more to right!"). After a while I decided that it was all too much! We pulled into a restaurant parking lot, went in and ordered food. I ate too fast and my ring wouldn't let it pass. I lost my meal in the bathroom.

Back in the camper I almost left the parking lot pointing in the wrong direction, but Razelle, by faithful companion, stopped me from doing so. Finally, as we left the congestion of built up Perth, I was able to concentrate on the task at hand and calm down. Farther to the south we pulled off the road again and parked by a large grocery store called Woolworths, located in an extensive shopping complex. It had no bathroom. We had to cross a street to a small park to use the public toilets. We bought a few supplies for the camping trip and entered traffic again, this time with far more competence. I was managing to cope with the gear shifting and lane width and roundabouts much better now. In fact, it was obvious enough to Razelle as we headed south through open country that I was getting the hang of this and she actually dozed off in the navigator's chair. It was dark when we reached the area where we'd planned to camp (even though it was only 6:00 PM). We consulted our maps and found a secluded caravan park in Myalup. It is a delightful place. Very quiet. It took us some time to get organized and learn how to reconfigure the benches into beds and stow our stuff. Put here we are, actually camping in Australia, under a star-and-milky-way filled sky. I found the southern cross! As the night-time temperatures drop to around 10°C outside and a light rain falls while I compose this, we are experiencing Australia safely ensconced in our camper, surrounded by all our possessions and looking forward to tomorrow.