90 days in Australia. 4 accommodations paid.

When you travel you have plenty of free time. Actually, your free time gets spread on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You start to look at it differently. I still remember the feeling, when I finished my last day at work and walked out of the door, feeling weirdly free. The situation, I pushed myself in, was completely new.

Let me go back to the free time while traveling for a longer period of time. A certain percentage of your time is dedicated to discover new places, meet people, get lost, etc. And there is another part of it which is called planning. I didn’t expect (or didn’t even think about it before) to devote so much free time to it. If you want to travel on a budget, you need to keep on finding workarounds for the flights, accommodation, food, activities, etc. Especially, if you don’t stay too long in one place and want to see as much as possible. There are moments when you don’t have the energy to think where you’ll stay next, what you’ll do there, where you’ll sleep. But then your wallet waves at you and reminds you to keep on trying to find a free accommodation. In 90 days, I paid for exactly four nights (3 for hostels and 1 for an Airbnb room). All the other nights I slept at local’s places. Friends, Couchsurfing and Workaway - thank you so much for that! When I calculated the costs, I was surprised how little I spent. I forgot about all the hours dedicated to plan my trip. Not just because of the money saved but especially because of the people I met and stayed with. They made my Australian trip unique and unforgettable.

Three months in Australia were full of new adventures, unforgettable moments, very kind people and hot days. Oz, as the locals call it, is different from what I am used to. First, you need to switch your mind from right to left. Drive on the left, walk on the left and look on the right when you cross the road. Be aware of kangaroos and koalas and try not to hit them with a car. When you scream “It’s beach time!”, your Australian host will very seriously ask you if you know about the rips. A rip current, often simply called a rip, is a specific kind of water current which can occur near beaches with breaking waves. However, a rip can often be hard to see and absent from breaking waves, and only recognised by a ripple on the top of the water that heads out to sea. A rip is a strong, localized, and narrow current of water which moves directly away from the shore, cutting through the lines of breaking waves like a river running out to sea, and is strongest near the surface of the water. (Wikipedia) If the beach is patrolled, you’ll see the signs and the flags which will tell you where the rips are and where it is save to go for a swim. If there is no patrol, it’s all on you, to be a responsible swimmer. The ocean is not the Croatian coast where the only thing you need to worry about is to not step on a sea urchin. If you don’t respect the ocean, it will screw with you big time. The other thing Ozzies really like to talk about are the deadly animals. There are so many of them. They like to scare you a bit but also educate in case you are in a situation where you see a brown snake in the bush or a spider hanging around the house. So yeah, Australia is different. And differentiation attracts, right?

I always like to read interesting facts from people who travel. The facts that made their journey different and more personal. So I thought I’ll share mines with you as well.

Places I’ve visited:

Melbourne

Torquay

Great Ocean Road

Mornington Peninsula

Phillip Island

Sydney

Wollongong

Blue Mountains

Newcastle

Seal Rocks

Nelson Bay

Port Macquarie

Ellenborough Falls

Byron Bay

Gold Coast

Brisbane

Sunshine Coast

Noosa

Hervey Bay

Bundaberg

Fraser Island

Three states visited: Victoria - The Place To Be; New South Wales, Queensland - Sunshine state

Money spent:

40€ - flight from Melbourne to Sydney

118€ - Fraser island (the biggest sand island in the world) tour

96€ - car rental for 3 days + petrol per person

1042€ - food, drinks, transport, activities, other

79€ - accommodation for 4 nights

IN TOTAL: 1375€

The most random experience: greyhounds race in Bundaberg with a retired couple

Work that I did in return for an accommodation and food:

• Built a website

• Gardening

• Cooking

• House cleaning

• Window cleaning

• Car cleaning

• Babysitting

Workaway hosts that I’ve stayed with: 7

• 2 organic freaks

• 1 super trustful family who left us the house keys and heaps of frozen food and went on holidays

• 1 couple in their 50s who decided to quit their jobs, rent out their house and go traveling for 4 months around Europe

• 1 guy with 2 kids and a villa who sold his company for $20 million and was left with $1,4 million after paying off his ex-wifes

• Family with 6 kids, one dog, one cat and daily fresh dog poo in the bathroom

• 1 couple in their 70s who has 7 racing greyhound dogs and produce on average 25l of spirits (scotch, whiskey, gin, etc.) per month

Thank you Australia!

Next journey will be taking place in a completely different country, not too far away from Australia. Can you guess where?

I’ll keep you posted! ;)