More of Australia

We would like to thank Aaron Thor, a fellow Singaporean that we met in Dallas, USA, for his generous donation in supporting our trip. It was very helpful for us to sustain in Australia to wait for a few months, in our last wave of this trip.

From Steve's home, we hardly say goodbye to him after staying a month with him. It was really a wonderful time staying with the whole family and he really shares many things about chainsaw with me.

We travelled south again, as u can see on the map. We travelled 1500km for 5 days along the 'highway'. Most of the time it was hot! We would feel cooler if we put down our visor to block the wind from blowing into our face. How does it feel like? Imagine u have a hair dryer blowing 2 feet away directly onto your face.
Everytime we stop for break, we really have to find a good shade else everything would melt. One day, I opened up the first aid kit and look for an alcohol swab to clean a wound. It was a small square packet. I tore it apart and the piece of swab inside the packaging was dried!

We travelled 6-7 hours a day, 500km each. We could do at a faster speed but Hope Too was feeling weak. I wouldn’t be surprise that Hope Too stopped working at any point. Yes, any point.

Some of the short cut we took were really deserted. We couldn’t see the end of the land.

Road less travelled.

Dry dry... who survive?

Can't see the end of the land. not much vehicle use this road. If Hope Too stopped working here, the priority when we tried to stop a passing vehicle is to ask for water.

Some of the town that we passed through had beautiful buildings.

It was a Sunday evening and the sun hasn't set but 95% of the shops were closed. I can imagine if all the rental rates goes up as high as Singapore's property, 99% of these shops would be opened till late night.

Sunday...

One of the 5% of the shops was open for business.

Even drive through...

free coffee for highway users.

Once we reached the state of Victoria, we were ready to settle down and here, for the very first time, we had fried noodles, the taste of home food (again).

We were stopped by local police. They requested to see my Victoria registration papers but I couldn't produce it. I told them that it was a temporary imported vehicle into Australia using the CPD from Sydney Airport. I handed them my Singapore Driving Licence and they were satisfied about it. For the past 27 months, it was my very first time to hand over my original driving licence to a policeman.

We paid a$250 each for visa extension. I filled in the form online and answer all their questions. I was granted a visa till 28 May 2010. Samantha had a different reply from the immigration department.