Message Stick

Arriving back in Melbourne felt a bit like coming home after our brief spell living here earlier in the year. Tan and Ben kindly put us up for the night and helped us start some pre-anniversary celebrations with a bottle of bubbly and a small shrine to our marriage. They also kindly bought the quintessential Aussie gift of his and hers stubby holders. The perfect welcome back to Australia!

Bleary eyed and still dark outside, we made our way to Southern Cross station to board ‘The Overland’ train to Adelaide. Taking just over 10 hours it was a good opportunity to catch up on the sleep we missed out on from the previous night. The scenery was typical of south Australia with gumtrees, vineyards and the occasional kangaroo. However, we were somewhat surprised to see a herd of giraffes on the horizon until the conductor explained we were passing by a huge safari park. Getting off in Adelaide we discovered that due to the Easter holidays everything would be closed for Good Friday, so we spent a pretty quiet day exploring the city and making plans for our trip up north.

With a giant shopping list and a swanky new hire car we set off on the first leg of ‘The Explorer Highway’; an epic trans-Australian drive from Adelaide to Darwin. We’d planned to camp as much as possible en-route to save some cash and got some great bargains on our gear. The first stop at Port Augusta was a mere stones throw from Adelaide but it gave us a good chance to perfect our erection technique before we got into the big bad outback. Even at this point the vegetation was starting to thin and the temperatures rise. Thank God for air-con!