Outback adventures part 1

I had travelled along the coast for a while which was very pretty and also great if you want to meet German backpackers. But once I got tired of them (because I had this romantic idea of hanging out with Australians in Australia), I planned my little outback trip which was met with quite a few obstacles.

I can list a bunch of reasons why I’m not traveling by car, but in fact, I’ve never truly questioned my dislike for car travel, so for now I just don’t do it. Using public transport, I was limited to busier and more touristy areas and routes. Furthermore, since I’m traveling outside the main season, some of these services don’t even run at this time of the year. But I didn’t want to do just an organized bus tour to Uluru for a photo and back.

So after many many phone calls and emails my itinerary looked like this:
Plane from Cairns to Normanton, taxi to Karumba, bus back to Normanton, historic Gulflander train to Croydon, bus to Mount Surprise, bus to Atherton, bus to Cairns airport. At most of these places, which are little towns, I stayed for one or two nights and usually had the choice between a motel room or pitching my tent. I always went for the rooms, which had air conditioning, because temperatures were between almost 30 C at night and almost 40 C during the day.

So go ahead and read my outback log which is coming up soon!

A side note: Funnily enough, on my last day on the east coast, so close to escaping the German backpacker crowds, in Cairns, I went out for beers with a really nice German guy - not a backpacker though, but a professional trombonist from Bonn doing a musician exchange. He even offered to join him on a trip up north - finally a fellow traveler who I felt I would get along with AND who traveled in the more or less right direction (didn’t mind that he was German), but I had already organized my outback trip.