Today we left Pambulla and drove around the south coast into Victoria, and to a village called Lake Tyree. We’ve just gone through 8,000 kilometres of driving here in Australia – added together with all of the other driving we’ve done on the trip so far, it works out at 11,000 miles. That means we’ve driven the equivalent of halfway around the world – so we didn’t need to fly anywhere at all! Half of them have been driven in this camper, in the last 7 weeks. While it has been good to have the van, its started to drive us all a little crazy, especially the last week when we were confined inside by the rain for long stretches. Probably one of our greatest expenses will have been petrol, although fortunately we’ve not come across a country where it’s as expensive as at home (which is a bit of a relief, as we’ve not come across a vehicle as fuel efficient as at home either!). Here in Australia petrol is 90 cents a litre (about 36p), and in the States it was around the same (90 cents) a gallon (about 60p a gallon). Amazingly, in both countries we’ve commonly heard people complaining about the price of fuel – they must be a bit shocked when they come to Europe on holiday. Mind you, you’d be hard pushed to drive 4,000 miles around the UK in 7 weeks!

The long drives, and the constant travel, has sometimes been a bit disorienting – with places starting to look the same the world over. Especially things like churches – this one was in Eden in southern New South Wales, but it could easily be on the North West coast of the States, or in California, or Sweden, or Canada etc. You do have to stop yourself occasionally and remind yourself which country you’re in.