Day 51 - 55: Ayr - Rockhampton - Brisbane - Byron Bay - Port Macquarie - SYDNEY

So after 25,000+ kilometres we've made it! London's Tower Bridge to Sydney's Harbour Bridge raising over £4,000 (so far) for Doctors of the World. The end of the second (yes there's still one more part to come!) stage of this set of three challenges.

55 days of travel with 24 buses, 15 trains, eight boats, one plane hop, a horse, many motos, two car rides and 23 nights on transport have seen us cross 20 countries, three continents and 14 changes of time zone - a truly epic and unforgettable journey full of countless stories of people, places, brushes with histories we can only imagine and inspirations only travelling in my opinion can provide.

Our final leg saw us renting a car and driving south down Australia's stunningly beautiful east coast, covering 2,500km across our five days spending hours driving 300km through nighttime starlit Central Queensland wilderness in search of a motel, dropping onto the long sands of Rainbow Beach, enjoying the live music of Brisbane, catching a few waves and whale spotting at Byron Bay, and exploring the lighthouses and coastal towns of the New South Wales coast before a surprise highlight; visiting our home from hometowns of Gloucester and Stroud (populations of 2,500 and 550 respectively) on our approach to Sydney and our at last final destination Sydney Harbour Bridge.



Walking up the steps to the bridge in the cool afternoon (two mistakes we made planning this trip - 1. Australia is a big place and 2. it's cold at this time of year) brought a sense of elation hard to describe as the trials and tribulations of the past two months seemed to flash through our minds as a continuous stream of experiences rather than the drag and drop feeling of boarding a plane and emerging from a near/far away airport. As the kilometres have passed we've watched peoples, languages, cuisines and cultures at times gradually, and at times abruptly, change from the familiarity of Western Europe through the snack size Baltic states, across the vast, cold, bleak vodka and potato fuelled expanses of the monumentally expansive Russian continent down through the wilds of Mongolia into the building site called China and down to the glistening paddy fields and traumatic histories of Vietnam and Cambodia before the traveller friendly Malay peninsula and air conditioned shopping malled comfort of Singapore, starkly contrasted by the frustrations of Indonesian travel, made worth while by the beauty of its islands' beaches and volcanic landscapes, the artificially new UN East Timor and the comfortably western wilderness and fast food of Australia.

Reading this blog and hearing how we have stuck to schedule, and survived with few major setbacks, may give the impression this journey half way around the world is a simple endeavour, but having spent over 500 hours sat/lying/squashed on all kinds of transport dealing with all kinds of challenges from lack of schedules to fully booked trains, touts' scams, consular bureaucracy, unintelligible (for us) languages, unfamiliar foods, and the simple requirements of keeping ourselves rested, fed, watered and healthy, I can tell you this trip is not one to be taken on lightly, but at the same time also that trips like this are possible. A little organisation (preferably more than our six weeks minimalist approach), common sense, cash card, SMALL rucksacks (some people seem to carry their entire worldly possessions) and travel friendly passports accompanied with eager minds, equally open to trusting people as to detecting when a scam may be afoot, all go a long way to making this journey not only possible, but a true adventure of a lifetime.

We've been exceedingly lucky to have been supported by so many people back home, friends we dropped in on along the way, others who joined us for short sections of the trip, the many strangers we met en route who showed us friendship and help often just when we really needed it, and you. It's been our first "blogged" trip so we hope you've found our words interesting either as a short break away from work, a read over a morning coffee or even an inspiration to pick up an atlas or click onto Google and find out more about some of the places, historic events and peoples we've mentioned through these entries. Even in the worst internet connected places it's been a pleasure to write these entries, made worth it by the feedback we've received already and the money we've raised on the back of this challenge for Doctors of the World. If you have enjoyed this blog and are of a charitable mind, please consider a donation to Doctors of the World. Take a look at their website below to see the work they do, and if you decide to support our charity, a donation is only a few clicks away!

www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/

Donating only takes a minute clicking on the "Donate" link on the right hand side of this page or here. Every penny donated goes straight to the charity.

For the super keen of you, who'd like to be made aware of our next trip (yes, there may well be another challenge at some point in the future), please drop me an email at robpilkington@gmail.com. Please include any comments you have on this blog, any requests for the next trip's one and I'll make sure you get invited as the planning gets started - wonderful though Google is, we can't automatically see the email addresses of all the subscribers to this blog!

Thanks again to all of you for following this challenge - keep checking back over the next week to hear how Will gets on riding his bike from London to Paris. Crazy idea. Can't wait to see how much he hurts!

Ayr - Sydney: 35 hours driving / 2,500 km
TOTAL LONDON TO SYDNEY: 25,050 km

FUND RAISING TOTAL: £3,900 including Gift Aid - please keep these Doctors of the World donations coming - click here!

2 Bridges Photos Day 47 - 51: Dili - Darwin - Tennant Creek - Townsville

Photos of our Dili - Darwin - Tennant Creek - Townsville leg. Click on the photo to view the full album!

If you like our pictures, please consider a donation to our charity Doctors of the World - to donate click here

Day 47 - 50: East Timor - Darwin - Tennant Creek - Townsville

So the short of it is that we have had to fly. Just 500km, a mere hop in the scheme of this 25,000km trip. We always knew that the chances of finding a boat from East Timor to Australia were slim given our timescales, and the tiny glimmer of hope we had of bribing/sweet talking (would have been interesting to see which would have worked best with a container ship captain) our way on board Perkin's Thor Pacific sailing on the 29th July were dashed by the combination of Indonesian ferry schedules and East Timorese bureaucracy, and to await the next sailing would have seen Will not cycling to Paris (crazy, even in my book) and me asking for another week, month or who knows how much longer leave.

Over the past three weeks we've followed every lead for a boat to Oz, from yacht racing to Australian Defence Force vessels to container ships, from Indonesia, East Timor, the closest land to Australia apart from the arduous one month to reach Torres Straits islands at the southern tip of Papua from where we could conceivably have got onto a people smuggling boat - probably not a plan either of our mums would have been particularly keen on!

The truth is that to make the Indonesia/East Timor to Darwin crossing, you need time. Lots of time. The hostel owner (from Lancashire) we met in Dili waited a year. And that's waiting in Dili which is probably not the most attractive place to spend such a prolonged holiday! Sailing from Singapore would have been possible, but would have bypassed Indonesia and made the trip all a bit too easy and enjoyable!

Surrounded by UN workers and well paid contractors our Airnorth plane hopped the 500km in 60 minutes, and really made us question why we'd not listened to all the advice we'd received along the trip that flying really made a lot more sense than spending 14 hours on a train, or up to 24 on a bus covering the same distance and without the complimentary scone and fake orange juice.

In Darwin, once past the immigration (who also thought we were mildly crazy), we felt completely disorientated. The whole balance of our previous seven weeks suddenly changed and we became the poor backpackers struggling to comprehend the sky high Aussie prices - high anyway, and in comparison to Indonesia a completely different world. Ordering noodles at random from a menu was replaced by carefully checking menu prices and finally deciding that Subway was the most economical way of stuffing ourselves full of the now foreign to me at least Western food ($18 for Fish and Chips - the equivalent of a whole day's subsistence for us along most of our journey!).

The social side seemed equally bizarre, surrounded by similar looking people to us, we no longer stood out as the "tourist to be touted" and became "regular backpackers from the UK probably looking for a job". The special treatment ended, but with it also our constant wariness that we were being set up to be ripped off.

A quiet night (largely because beer is so expensive) was spent back in dorm mode. Not sure how people live for months in these working visa ghetto like places. I think it would drive me insane, however, horses for courses, they all thought we were mad not to have come to Oz straight from London in an aeroplane. Touche.

Day 48 saw the beginning of our three day Greyhound experience, heading south along (reading this you have NO idea how grateful this made us) straight, flat, smooth and empty road through the Northern Territory with our only regret being missing the 1st July Fireworks, the only day of the year fireworks are permitted apparently. Weird, but then again it does seem Australia has a lot of rules about stuff like this.

Reaching the ex-gold mining town of Tennant Creek at 2am on Saturday morning (you need a good map to find this place) we could see why strict rules exist, as we were dropped by the bus into the middle of a mass local aboriginal street fight. Scariest moment of the trip so far without any shadow of doubt as we rapidly reassessed our plan of sticking the rest of the night out in the bus station, and heeded local Aussie advice and beelined for a caravan park, and crashed in the unlocked TV room before making an early exit in the morning. Tramp-esque, but when needs must.

With a whole day in front of us and the best suggestions from locals of what to do being "nothing", "sleep", "go to the bar" (eating would have been up there but extended opening hours here seems to mean five days a week plus three hours on Saturday), we were helped out by local Sue who drove us to see the local highlights of the lookout point, and the local dam. We survived the 4km bush walk back with none of the snakes showcased at some of the highway pubs, the famous Larrimah in particular, seen much to my relief. The rest of the day was spent trying to learn the virtues of Aussie Rules football, drinking a few schooners, and finding out just the way to make the pool balls come out of the table, while retaining our dollar coin.

As we ate our $20 pizza (another Aussie priced "bargain"), we watched the beginning of Saturday night unfold, with more evidence of the massive social divides between white and aboriginal populations in these remote towns, with everyone seeming to get along in a state of uncomfortable mutual tolerance. It's hard to explain this without being here, a dynamic far beyond many of the high horse European liberal opinions but yet still one that seems a long way from a long term solution where your background makes no difference to how you make the most of the undoubted opportunities Australia offers (having seen the atrocious recent histories of Vietnam and Cambodia, and lacking infrastructure of Indonesia makes me a harsher judge of whether peoples' complaints really hold water).

Night bus (no chickens) through to Mount Isa, one of Australia's mining capitals, followed by another 12 hour ride east through to Townsville were uneventful. We hit a roo, but seems this is normal. Just have to hope it doesn't take your headlight out apparently. Food stayed limited to steak sandwiches, and our sickly Coles' cereal bars as we were treated to Gordon the driver's recollections of his true busman's holiday to the UK.

As we hit Townsville, Australia had changed. No more road trains or desert but a chique looking urban centre with a pleasant sea front and beach (from what we could see in the dark!), and a sleek looking Mitsibushi Galant looking ready to take us on the final section of our journey. Road trip to Sydney!

Ps. Check out our updated Google Map of the route and our stop off points (click on the map to zoom in).... IN OZ NOW!

Dili - Darwin: 1 hour flight hour / 500 km
Darwin - Tennant Creek: 14 bus hours / 1,000 km
Tennant Creek - Mount Isa: 10 bus hours / 650 km
Mount Isa - Townsville: 11 bus hours / 900 km
TOTAL TO DATE: 22,065 km

FUND RAISING TOTAL: GBP 3,780 including Gift Aid - please keep these Doctors of the World donations coming - click here!

2 Bridges Photos Day 44 - 47: Ende - Dili (Timor Leste)

A ferry!! And lots more photos of West Timor and Timor Leste if you click on it!

If you like our pictures, please consider a donation to our charity Doctors of the World - to donate click here

Day 44 - 46: Ende - Dili (Timor Leste)

Indonesia is redeemed! Well nearly. Day 44 saw us up at 5am determined that we wouldn't let any ferry that might run that day leave before we could work out which port it would leave from. A rather surreal 20 minute moto ride alongside the black sand beaches of Flores got us to a port with definitely no ferry but a large group of Indonesians apparently as confused as us, yet seemingly perfectly content that at some point a boat would turn up.

And turn up it did! Albeit a rust bucket (see our photos for this leg), rocking in the swell as horses and goats slid off amongst the packet carrying passengers, bracing itself for the military landing craft style rush of the awaiting throng of passengers.

Rather ambivalent to the length of journey given the range of estimates we'd been given, we were happy enough just to be onboard and sailing southeast towards West Timor, and the regional centre of East Nusa Tenggara of Kupang, still just about on time to make our scheduled arrival date in Australia.

The next day was to be one full of surprises - and generally of the good kind. After 19 hours of cramped sleep using some of our trip learnt contortion positions, and hopefully our last pot noodle of the journey, we arrived EARLY in Kupang and 3.30am moto-ed by starlight to one of the least salubrious accommodations we've enjoyed. Waking up next day we found ourselves right on the seafront with views along the beach, and a bustling town most notable for by its country and western / hiphop pumping pimped bemo minibuses.

After the ferry delays in Indonesia, to have had any chance of catching a cargo ship down from Dili to Darwin we needed East Timor to have kept to their word and processed our visa applications in the promised 10 days, however even trawling spam boxes proved fruitless in our search for a reply meaning, in the consensus opinion of Kupang, a three day delay waiting for the letter and stamp that would let us into the world's "newest nation". Sweet talking was required, and dressed as smartly as we would (OK, so not that smart, but at least the flipflops came off) we assaulted the Timor Leste consulate with our full arsenal of pleasantries, smiles, linguistic abilities and subservience and respect for people doing an obviously extremely important job.

It worked, and six hours later (a record we are told) we had the letter, and were headed via a few frames of pool in the sunset where Will made a controversial comeback (a deliberate miss involved) to win the night 7-6 to Kupang's lively, fish packed night market for a juice, a beer at Edwin's L'Avalon bar to thank him for all his help during the day, and bed ready for (another) 4.30am start.

Day 46 was pretty much written off as a bus/border crossing day and we weren't far wrong as the West Timor road suddenly became a dirt track as we passed Atambua, the last West Timor town, and headed for the frontier. Stamped and inspected by a whole host of military, police and immigration authorities along with the standard money changing touts, we passed muster and were allowed into Timor Este, our 19th country of the trip, and miraculously still on schedule to make Australia as planned by 1st July, albeit now with no hope of making it onto the cargo boat that was our only (faint) hope of really making this epic journey without any flying.

As we drove noorth east towards Dili, the landscape became more and more arid, and further and further from the jungle type vegetation and favourable agricultural conditions of Flores and even West Timor, and settlements appeared poorer compared to their western neighbours. Stunning coastlines prevailed as we moved towards the UN compound/town that acts as Timor Leste's capital since their bloody independence from Indonesia and subsequent UN governance over the last two decades.

Smarting from the cost of accommodation, the price of food didn't really help as it became increasingly apparent that the abundance of UN and NGO staff, combined with Timor Leste's need to import almost everything (a pint of milk comes from Australia and is USD $5) makes for a bad budget backpacker location. Still, I didn't mind as the slope of the pool table played to my advantage and the score levelled at 9-9.

Bed was not particularly appealing, but given how much we had paid, we made the most of it, our last real "travelling" night of the trip.

Ps. Check out our updated Google Map of the route and our stop off points (click on the map to zoom in).... IN OZ NOW!

Ende - Kupang: 19 ferry hours / 250 km
Kupang - Dili: 12 bus hours / 250 km
TOTAL TO DATE: 19,015 km

FUND RAISING TOTAL: GBP 3,780 including Gift Aid - please keep these Doctors of the World donations coming - click here!

2 Bridges Photos Day 39 - 43: Gili Trawangan - Ende

At last! A Ferry Schedule! You may laugh, but right now all we want is a ferry! Click on the photo for more (interesting) pictures!

If you like our pictures, please consider a donation to our charity Doctors of the World - to donate click here

Day 39 - 43: Gili Trawangan (Lombok) - Ende (Flores)

Maybe our joint subconscious in demanding a break in Gili knew something we may have suspected, but always hoped, wouldn't be the case: that travelling through the world's largest cul-de-sac of the volcanic Nusa Tenggara islands would be the most frustrating, time consuming and complex part of the journey as we moved well beyond the standard backpacker trail of Bali and western Lombok and onto islands so remote that even Google thinks they are empty (see our Google Map).

Leaving behind the comfortingly almost symbiotic relationship between tourists and locals on the Gili islands full in the knowledge that rapid progress was needed, we sacrificed the amazingly tempting tourist snorkelling boat via Komodo (of dragon fame) for the local alternative: a 16 hour bus through Lombok and Sumbawa islands to meet the 12 hour ferry on to Lubuanbajo at the western extreme of Flores.

The lack of comfort sleeping amongst sacks of rice, heads resting on the subwoofer speaker as water leaked from the onboard toilet past our feet, has become pretty much the norm, but the major problem we were finding ourselves coming up against was the plethora of inaccurate travel information through which we had wade to try and divine what transport might actually happen. To say this disinformation is malicious is certainly true in some cases (our need to save time saw us done out of $10 each on this leg), but in most seems to stem from a refusal by locals to ask anyone who might actually know, relying instead on family and friends' opinions as unquestionable and beyond doubt, certainly by jumped up bule like us.

Mildly soothed by the stunning scenery of Komodo island from our ferry, and then the mountainous story book style tropical landscapes of Flores as we enjoyed the luxury of a hired car, the key question in our minds became how to turn early Lombok assurances that a ferry operates every Tues, Thurs and Sat between Ende in Flores and Kupang in West Timor, into a ticket and a big white boat that would actually take us across to the next island on our journey.

Doubts over even what port the ferry would run from, before even worrying about days and times, seemed only to multiply in Lubuanbajo to the extent our agreement with the owner of the car we hired to cross Flores was that we paid him once we were on the Kupang bound gangplank - a very shrewd move as three hours cruising the appropriately named Ende on our arrival culminated with no ferry on the day we'd been promised, and none likely until at least two days after. Not ideal. Will & Rob not happy. Can ANY other place in the world have such poor and apparently randomly generated information with such feeble resemblance to reality?

As I write this we still don't know if they'll ever be a ferry, but at http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifleast the delay here in Ende allowed us to shoot out north to the majestic and breath taking Kelimutu volcanic lakes (towards the end of our photos for this leg). Sitting on the rim blinded by mist there are few words to describe the beauty and almost unworldlike appearance of these crater lakes as the cloud rises slowly revealing their cameleon like colours, changing through blue, green, red and black as their mineral cocktail evolves over time. A further 10 US cents spent saw us enjoying the spa like hot volcanic spring water bubbling up in the middle of the surrounding paddy fields. Did it stop us worrying about the ferry? Well no, but I tell you, for any readers thinking about taking a ferry from Ende, this is the place to come and wait!

Indonesia is certainly proving the most challenging country of the trip so far, its outstanding natural beauty just about making up for the frustrations of travelling here. Let's just hope the ferry does run tomorrow! Come on Indonesia, redeem yourself!

Ps. Check out our updated Google Map of the route and our stop off points (click on the map to zoom in).... "not far" to go now!

Mataram - Lubuanbajo: 32 hours & 14 ferry hours / 450 km
Lubuanbajo - Ende: 12 car hours / 400 km
TOTAL TO DATE: 18,515 km

FUND RAISING TOTAL: GBP 3,620 including Gift Aid - please keep these Doctors of the World donations coming - click here!