Aside from really enjoying catching up with relatives my highlights included:

• meeting a great number of rather interesting individuals in both Singapore and Sumatra
• being a guest of the Dutch ambassador and staying at the residence
• partaking in a cruisy sailing race near Singapore’s Changi airport
• laughing uncontrollably when witnessing the wild traffic in Medan
• shaking hands with semi-wild Orang Utans
• being challenged as a vegetarian in Sumatra (despite our very helpful guide’s efforts, there’s only so many omelettes one can eat)

Sailing near Changi airport.

Singapore architecture.

Singapore from above.

One of the friendly locals.

Lake Toba school kids enjoying themselves.

Of course, such a short write up doesn’t really do justice to the wonderful experiences I had along the way. Some of the extraordinary and incredible encounters along the way are well deserving of their own account. All the people, scenery, architecture and the myriad of photographic opportunities…

I shall return.

Taipei

With some time to kill while waiting for a transfer I ventured out to explore the airport and its stranded nomads. I came across a smoking lounge—resembling a trendy club with highly efficient air purifiers buzzing away.

Smoking Lounge, Taipei

Smoking Lounge, Taipei

Airline Food

Somewhere along the line my (rather late) request for vegetarian meal was lost in translation. Airline food being nobody’s favourite, I was just as content munching a few extra breadrolls. Still, some minutes later, I was kindly offered a vegetarian meal belonging to a crew member… Now there’s a fine example of decent customer service.

En route to Frankfurt, over Russia.

Frankfurt

I was happy with the way the ceiling looked: due to maintenance its air conditioning ducts and wiring were visible—making it an interesting opportunity.

Baggage Claim, Frankfurt Airport.

All in all, we covered about 4,000 km, took many pictures, had a lovely time filled with laughter, story telling and a few adventures thrown in for good measure.

We will certainly do this again. But next time we’ll be taking a 4WD, a roo bar and a satelite phone. We shall be limited by our imaginations only.

**note**
Holiday images have been processed on my laptop and came out quite flat looking. As soon as I see chance to work at my calibrated desktop I’ll reprocess them.

Then there is the beach…

Yes, the beach…

Our Last Meal

On the island we had some of the worst meals of our entire trip. The service was good & the people friendly. But when you order vegetarian lasagna you’re not expecting something resembling hot carrot cake. Thankfully we were not charged for the meal. Assuming that this must have been a mistake we returned the next evening. How about vegetarian pizza? Surely you can’t stuff that up? Apparently you can: potatoes & carrot and more potatoes & carrot. Top that with a huge amount of cheese on a thick half baked pizza base. I guess that’s why we saw our nice waitress at the pizza restaurant on the other side of the island the following night—she knew where to get her meals. She made a few funny comments about this herself. Good on her.

Blue Lake

Point Lookout

The Island

The Island itself is small but very picturesque; a couple of nice beaches line the east coast (much to the delight of local and visiting surfers). Most of the action on the island is centered around Point Lookout. We managed to spot quite a few dolphins, but unfortunately no whales (despite it being the right season for it).

Point Lookout

The ferry about to take us back to Brisbane

Speed camera sign on the border of Queensland and NSW (facing NSW)

The back of the sign lets the sunlight through the bullet holes

Along the way we saw a fair few emus. One of which was content running in front of the car, allowing my mum to snap a couple of nice shots.

Emus

Road runner

In Toowoomba we ate some of my favourite fries in the town’s top fish & chips shop, The Lazy Fisherman. Chips are prepared with home made spicy batter—allowing them to turn nice and crunchy. I used to enjoy them on my regular Toowoomba visits, so it was nice to do so again.

Leaving town we felt a wobble while driving at low speeds. We thought it best to get it checked out by tire specialists. Jokingly we observed nobody would want to look at the car because of the lingering smell from the rotting roo carcass we hit two days earlier. The smell turned out to be less of a worry than our tires: we were told that two tires had started to separate and could blow at any moment. Replacing them took longer than expected, and we were starting to be concerned about possibly missing the last ferry to Stradbroke Island, our next stop.

We came into Brisbane fairly late in the afternoon. After a lot of running around, we decided we could no longer make the ferry. Instead, we spent the rest of the day appreciating Brisbane’s skyline and eating good food in the Valley.

Brisbane skyline

We managed to stay clear of any live roos, eventhough they did hop on the road in front of us. We did however hit a carcass at 90km/hr. straight down the middle of the car. It made a lot of noise, but there was not much that could be done about that. By the time you see it, you are too late, and sit right on top of it. An unfortunate rabbit also went underneath the car. It decided to hop the wrong way, and did not make it. Since rabbits are a pest in Australia (severely affecting the natural landscape), we did not feel all that bad about its demise.

We were very glad to reach Colbar at last, found a hotel and tried to get a bite to eat. That proved quite hard; the only establishment still serving was the roadhouse where truckies hung out. I decided to skip a meal: being a vegetarian, my appetite was soon diminished after reading the *meat only* menu.

After 585 km turn right…

Straight roads…

I have been told that the people putting in the roads were given premiums for curved stretches (they’d take more effort). Supposedly they ended up adding curves where none were required. I am glad they did, because these straight roads, although fun to drive, are both hypnotic and tiresome.

And a curve…

We came across some interesting townships along the way, such as Wilcannia (of Wilcannia Mob fame). These towns have been hit hard by the ongoing drought. It is sad to see the state they are in.

Living in the city, you don’t fully realise the affect of the drought has on these areas. You read the reports, but life goes on like normal for most city dwellers. Yes, produce gets more expensive, and we all take shorter showers, and no longer hose our lawns. But on the whole we still have our jobs, our fun, our dignity.

For these outback people it is a different story. We spoke with friendly, but fairly depressed looking propiertors of a small cafe. They mentioned that since the town’s largest employer, the roo processing plant, had moved to another town many people left with it. This, of course had an adverse effect on their own business, which seemed like it had seen better days. It had been years since they had a decent rain, and many months since the last sprinkle.

Close to one of the drought affected townships

The drought can make people very depressed, with all ensuing problems: alcoholism, increased rates of suicide, divorce, break ups of both families and friendships…

This Red Earth

When you gotta go, you gotta go!

Broken Hill

A gem in the middle of not much else. We intended to stay there for the night but that would have, once more, interfered with our itinerary. So we ended up staying no more than a few hours. We spent our time strolling through the main streets and taking pictures. We loved all the restored buildings. It is plain to see that at some stage, during the mining hey days, there was a lot of money floating around.