Each country we visited so far presented itself to us in a different way, each country encouraged a different mode of tourism. For Mongolia, for example, it was booking a tour with driver and his car, who brings you to the beautiful spots. Or in Thailand, where you basically just have to be a beach bum. Australia, on the other hand, is just screaming at you to hop in a van and explore the beaches and countryside and national parks and awesome friendly inhabitants. So, for the last leg of our journey in Australia, that's what we did.

So now we have three weeks to reach the city of Brisbane, about 1000km north of Sydney. To do that, we found the cheapest rental van we could find (We probably didn't do a very good job at that), and are now roaming the streets of Australia with Kacey-Eric for the next three weeks (Yeah, we couldn't really decide on a gender). Fitted with a little kitchen including a fridge, a sink and a gas stove, we are more or less independent of the typical touristic infrastructure of hostels and streetfood, and more dependent on the infrastructure Australia has to offer: Beaches and ocean pools with free showers, day use areas with BBQs and clean toilets, and awesome places with a view to park the car, roll out the bed, and get a good night sleep. Sometimes, all three of these are the same.

That of course means to be very close to Australian lifestyle sometimes. Staying overnight in carpark next to beach, and being (nearly) the only ones at night, and suddenly waking up at 6am to find the car park full and everyone at the beach walking the dog or surfing the waves before they head to work. Apparently, every workmans van or ute doubles as a surfboard transporter. Or the park in Newcastle, where a few vans are parked up for the night, only to be replaced by the cars of the joggers in the park, or just the commuters working in the nearby office buildings.

Add to that the fact that drinking water and water-refill stations are abundant, and you get an image of why Australia is just waiting to be explored by car or van. If only the beers were free too, but luckily, there are always friendly people around, who might invite you too a can of the local brew. But that's probably a story for another time.