作者：dali

公众号：大洋洲的钻石与铁锈

Cool Joy makes up her mind that the beginning of March will be the time we set off touring Australia. Since this plan will spice up my year, I willingly support it. My dream is to see the giant red rock in the middle of nowhere. Since I watched the documentary about Australia and had a sight of Uluru, I knew it would be a must-see spot.

Because I am still poor at driving, as always, Joy decides to undertake the whole responsibility and will drive through the journey. Now, here we are, on the road. After 5 days, we arrived in Sydney from Melbourne . We will take a break here for three days and continue northwards to meet some beaches before we get to the great barrier reef in Cairns.

Joy mapped out every detail of the journey, and normally she would do two hours of driving each day to cover around 200 km. The journey was to travel town after town, through the mountainous areas and get close to the beaches to unwind and hit the road again.

Before our journey, I learned from other tourists who had done the road trip before. Some did five hours’ driving per day. This idea of being confined in a car was killing me, but when it really turned out, it was bearable. On the second day , we had this terrible experience . A mistake was made and we traveled around 500km to get to the appointed house. We detoured to see two sights along the way, so altogether around 7 hours’ driving for a day. To pass time, we searched for catchy topics online and had a laughter reading all those hot articles. Never again would Joy want to do this anymore.

Interactions with airbnb hosts were a fun part . Most were seniors with their own houses, and there was one middle-aged couple. It’s a great way to have a look at someone’s living condition and lifestyle. We met with a Christian lady who lived in a blue fairy-tale style house with a garden and a lemon tree. There were a couple with three dogs, one bouncing, two quiet. Joy and I made friends with the dogs.  There was a man with a spacious living room and warehouse, his hobbies were doing pottery and traveling to India. He had a chat with us over dinner, which was the best part of the journey. The last hostess was a good-looking lady in her 70s, the house was quaint with traces of time, some old photos, however, she wasn’t that tidy, which gave us a lesson to be a tidy person. During our stay, she even had a boyfriend paying a visit.

During the drive, the highlights were always the sightseeing. We saw the moon harbor with a silver pavement of reflection. We passed rolling hills and meadows before getting to some lakeside villages. We met the ocean with different landscape at one side, where the lakes meet with ocean, the rock formation, the trees, the grass. There were a hundred beaches for you to see. Yesterday, Rain kept pouring when we crossed the sea–cliff bridge, the water should be crystal green but we had all misty gray.

It occurred to me, for my undergraduate thesis, I wrote an literature analysis about  On the road, depicting the beat generation in USA indulging on all wild stuff to look for the meaning of life. It’s quite a coincidence that finally, we two ladies would do such a grand road trip as free as the Americans.

I had another finding that some nonsense article became my self-fulfilling prophecy in a most bizarre way. In the past years, I taught English to  middle school students. There was a short article in the textbook called “ An exciting trip”, which sounded too simple.

An exciting trip

I have just received a letter from my brother, Tim. He is in Australia. He has just been there for six months. Tim is an engineer . He is working for a big firm and he has already visited a number of different places in Australia. He has just bought an Australian car and has gone to Alice springs, a small town in center of Australia. He will soon visit Darwin. From there he will fly to Perth. My brother has never been abroad before, so he is finding this trip very exciting.

Here we are, embracing Australia along the coastline.