Australia 2020

We landed in the big city of Melbourne (4,5 million) - and right away, we had to drop our many bags and go downtown, to hear Kyle's cousin who'd moved here a few years ago do stand up; we were tired, but super excited, having the opportunity to be "on the inside" right away, doing what locals do, and it was fun and funny, including the fact that we didn't get quite a few jokes, because we don't get the local references!

After only one day, it was clear that Melbourne is expensive, but that we love it: a real city with a soul, cool and stylish and full of art (including street art, especially the ever-changing public art at Hosier Lane and Ruthledge Lane), with pretty inner city which is filled with shops, international food venues, museums, bridges, new cool-looking skyscrapers, trams, street musicians, parks, students and tourists.

Around the inner city, the pretty old neighborhoods are turning hipster: old villas are mingling with cafes, bars and trees, it's all alive and green, dynamic but not overcrowded, with the ever-growing skyline in the background and the beach in the distance; food is amazing, and people are relaxed and nice, and enjoying all that the city life has to offer.

Kyle found two bikes pretty quickly (DR 650s - we named them Bruce and Bruce, after the Monty Python sketch), and then we had to figure out the paper work, find some panniers, top cases etc., and all this took us about a week - so while exploring "Melbs" was great, we were getting anxious to get on our way, especially because we kept spotting parrots and cockatoos in the trees!

Also, during the first few days, the skyscrapers were occasionally wrapped in smoke from the distant fires - but luckily, the rains had started to come, and we heard that most of those infamous fires were all but extinguished by now (well, there were now floods, and apparently even hurricanes on the way, but that's another story...).

We were writing this at our hosts' house outside of Melbourne (Liz and Steve also travel around the world on their DR 650s), where we were preparing the bikes for the road while admiring the kangaroos (!) on the nearby hill.

Our plan was to do a circle along the coast, clockwise, and since we were starting in southeast, this meant that we'd ride along most of the east coast (and its beaches, the Great Barrier Reef, rainforests and cities) at the end of our Australian trip; so after visiting Tasmania, we would start moving west towards Perth (where we wanted go inland, to visit the sacred Uluru and experience a little bit of the "outback", and then backtrack back to the southern coast - or perhaps we would go to Uluru from the northern coast, not sure yet), and then ride north to Darwin, then east, and then south, ending back in Melbourne.

The ferries to Tasmania are surprisingly packed though, so we had to wait one more day; but now we had our bikes, so we decided to go for a little ride to see some Australian wildlife.

We visited the Healesville Sanctuary, a zoo that specializes in keeping, saving, and breeding native Australian animals in the bushland environment (wallabies, wombats, dingoes, kangaroos, over 200 native bird varieties, and even a platypus live there), and spent a fun few hours observing sleeping koalas and curious parrots and all kinds of weird and glorious (and mostly unfortunately also endangered) members of Australian fauna, feeling like we'd finally arrived.

We're excited for what else was to come - Tasmania was next!

So, we took the night ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania, looking forward to exploration of the island that is only 300km away from the mainland, but which we'd read feels much more remote, because it has quite a different landscape and climate: it's colder, cleaner, greener and full of water, it's wild, and pretty empty of people (most live in the capital, Hobart).

By the way, "Tasmania" might sound exotic, but the state is simply named after the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, who set foot on the island in 1642.

We disembarked at 5am, which wasn't great, it was still dark and we didn't get much sleep, and so we went straight to McDonald's! (We were not alone, most motorcyclists did the same - McDonald's is usually open, and it has cheap coffee and free wifi).

After sunrise, we hit the road up towards the north-west; we rode along the craggy, rocky, pretty beaches, stopped in a few little towns, then took a nap under a tree right by the road at the picturesque town of Stanley.

We then went south and inland, and the Nova Scotia scenery changed into the British hilly countryside (rolling green hills, pretty forests, small farms), which then turned into Patagonia when we hit the west coast at Arthur's river - and felt the full brunt of the "roaring forties", i.e. the winds that take shape as warm air near the equator rises and moves toward the colder poles; during the Age of Sail (circa 15th to 19th centuries), these strong prevailing winds propelled ships across the Pacific, often at breakneck speed, which caused a lot of shipwrecks everywhere, from the bottom of South America to Tasmania's western coast, so the sailors started calling the latitudes between 40 and 50 degrees south of the equator the Roaring Forties.

We ended our day back north on the lovely coast, and camped in the pouring rain (as is tradition on this island - it rains a lot).

Next, we rode inland on beautiful curvy forest roads towards Cradle Mountain, and we started realizing that Tasmania poses a serious competition to the New Zealand's South Island: they may not have teal rivers and glaciers, but there are endless forests, hills, dark lakes and rivers, untamed nature for hours and hours, and you get to see a lot of their extraordinary wildlife, too, right by the road (including, sadly, lots of roadkill).

Wilderness has been preserved due to impenetrable scrub, rugged landforms and inhospitable climate, but Tasmanians also seem to have a tradition of taking care of their pure nature: the world's first political Green party was formed here; in the 1960s, activism prevented damming of rivers, and now, more than 20% of the state is designated as a World Heritage Area.

Inland Tasmania is dominated by its glacial landscape, including the beautiful Cradle Mountain - the natural symbol of the state. The mountain is a nice sight, but is meant for hiking - the forests, lakes and hills are just beautiful there.

But we did walk around a little bit in our full gear and were rewarded by meeting a few wombats (who look kind of like a mini chubby brown bear with a koala face, something out of a cartoon).

We also visited the park's Devil's Cradle, a sanctuary for the famous Tasmanian devil: they are now endangered due to a nasty incurable face-tumor disease, so the sanctuary breeds a healthy population and then moves it to an uncontaminated, secluded peninsula. Young devils are surprisingly cute, like little black bears; the adults are bigger than we thought and look weird, cute but ugly, their faces a bit bald and with pig eyes, bodies strong, and they do sound like growling little devils as they clumsily wobble around. We hoped to see them in the wild (there are many warning signs on the road to slow down for them) - but didn't really expect that to happen, not only because they're nocturnal but because most of them seem to be doomed by the disease...

However, as we rode on, we did see a lot of other animals: a flock of black parrots piercing through the sky, a yellow-bellied parrot flying just above our heads and a black cockatoo on a tree, all kinds of other new birds big and small, timid echidnas (those cute but weird "nosy" hedgehogs; the nose is actually a beak, and they are related to platypus, the only other mammal that lays eggs); and then in a $6 half-wild camp, which we reached after riding through little rustic Queenstown and then a mountain pass, we were visited by a pademelon mom (a tiny kind of kangaroo) and her joey, and then ended our awesome day sitting around a campfire under the Milky Way.

We then rode down towards Hobart, the capital - and it was another really nice ride, for hours through the wild; we felt great, a bit dirty at that point, and quite cold, but in the middle of a fabulous adventure! Plus, we were lucky to be staying at fellow moto traveler Deb's lovely Airbnb in Hobart for free (so we got her a few bottles of good Tasmanian wine).

Hobart is a nice town, not mind-blowing, but the downtown is pleasant and cosmopolitan with its colonial 1830s villas, the old warehouses at Salamanca that were turned into cafes and stores (Machine Laundry Café is especially popular, it's a fun combination of functioning laundromats and delicious dining), and the waterfront called "Old Wharf" (the location of the first settlement; there is not much to see except for a few old buildings, but it is really well described, so it's fun to read and learn about its history).

What really puts Hobart on the international map, however, is the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA): "Described by founder David Walsh as a ‘subversive adult Disneyland’, MONA blends both old and new art and will impress and surprise even the most modern art cynic. MONA is not for the faint-hearted though, as many exhibits on display are quite controversial, and include scenes of nudity and/or violence. Take Shanabrook’s ‘On the Road to Heaven the Highway to Hell’, or Delvoye’s ‘Cloaca machine’, both famous pieces at the MONA which caused much controversy but were both highly popular. The artwork is arranged randomly throughout the museum so visitors can wonder as they please and choose what they want to see." We really liked MONA, it's one of the best contemporary museums we've ever been to: the architecture is already crazy (the exhibitions are spread out on multiple underground levels, and the whole place is built into a hillside), and there was a lot of really good art by artists we know and by some we don't. MONA was not cheap ($30 per person, not including the temporary exhibitions) and it was packed, but totally worth a visit.

Finally, we rode back north along the east coast: the climate is milder here than on the west coast (though it's still cold, make no mistake), and it's more populated and civilized, but the many intact beaches with their white sands, turquoise ocean waves, and big rocks are just lovely!

We ended our day in Bicheno, a small quiet town that comes to life at sunset: first, the frogs start to converse all over the place (which seems such a rare thing to witness anymore) and then at 9pm, we went to the beach to watch (as much as we could, it was really dark) the little blue penguins come to the shore and wobble to their beds in the cliffs and bushes, so cute!

On our last day, we rode further up, past more little towns, farms, meadows, and gorgeous beaches, especially those along the Bay of Fire (so called either due to orange hue of rocks, painted by lichen, or due to Aboriginal fires the explorers spotted when they first approached; and we should mention that the Aborigines were pretty much wiped out after European settlement in 19th century); then we went inland, where Kyle HAD to ride the twisty "Jacob's Ladder" road up the rocky mountain (the road goes through a mossy, ancient forest, really strange yet beautiful; and then it turns into huge boulder forest with trees - no ground, just rocks, and it is really cold up there!) ...and then we arrived back to the ferry in Davenport.

We loved Tasmania! It's definitely cold, even now in the summer, but it's simply awesome: there isn't that much approachable pristine wilderness left to explore in this world (or at least we are constantly disappointed), but Tasmania still has loads of it, and it's such a unique place - we hope it stays that way!

Back in Melbourne, we took a short break to recuperate and to see the Tool concert (which was awesome, and the last concert for a good while for us, but we didn't know that, corona was not a thing yet...).

We took off on a warm sunny day (finally!), and soon we entered the famous Great Ocean Road - which should be called the Great Traffic Road, especially in the beginning! But, as we slowly moved ahead with all the other vehicles, we got to enjoy the really awesome views of the coast: sandy beaches and crashing turquoise waves of the Southern Ocean, for miles and miles, with a few swimmers, a few fishermen and a few dog-walkers... and many surfers; surfing really is the national folklore, they all seem to own wetsuits and boards, and they come and change in the parking lots and go right in, trying to catch that perfect wave.

We then went inland, riding the now empty road of Cape Otway, past meadows, hills and farmland, and then into the national park, where, in the few pockets of shady forest, we spotted three koalas having lunch in the manna gum tree canopies!

Late in the day, we made it to the iconic Twelve Apostles, which were a really pretty sight (the highlight of the Road, actually, and they were for free!); the seven or so mighty rock formations (not twelve, there never were twelve) seem like they're rising from the water, but are in fact, due to the ceaseless erosion of the waves, crumbling back into the mists of the ocean. So, these soft limestone cliffs are changing all the time, in 2005 for example, one 70m-high stack collapsed into the sea...

After enduring another cold night and waking up into a dark grey morning we then stopped at some other viewpoints on the Road (e.g. Bay of Islands, and the pretty London Bridge which collapsed in 1990 and near which a colony of penguins sleeps every night) and then we were on our way to Adelaide.

The weather keeps being exhausting since day one, no better down here than in New Zealand or Tasmania (steamy hot for a bit, then super cold and windy, just never really pleasant), but the landscape is nice, and there are parrots and parakeets everywhere (white cockatoos in the trees, and many other kinds, who are all piercing loudly through the sky - so elusive, but so colorful and pretty!), and the people are warm and relaxed and chatty (you have to greet everyone, even at the camp toilet in the morning, and they like to approach you and just talk to you for a while) but we found it harder to understand what they were saying here in the country!

And then we entered South Australia - the driest and hottest state (well, not on the coast where we were!) and above all, a wine country with many famous wine regions.

We spent two days in Adelaide: it's a relaxed town, nice if not mind-blowing, and a welcome spot to recover a little and get supplies for the road ahead (plus, they're famous for their festivals, so you might get lucky and end up having lots of fun).

In the camp, we were again entertained by animals: an opossum came to visit, and he was not afraid to sit down right next to us and eat the peanuts that fell off the table (they're cute and fun here, like cheeky chubby cats, but you must definitely hide all your food at night!).

We also went to the museum to learn a little about the Aboriginal culture (which was so wholesome and in tune with nature, we feel it's important to learn about and from it!) and saw the first few Aborigines in town - sadly, we also heard more bad stories about them (apparently they steal, will stop and rob you on a lonely road at night, etc.)...we would have to see, we really hoped they were wrong!

Adelaide is surrounded by wine regions, islands, hills with historic towns, and a small mountain range - but we decided it was time to go west, so we only took time to explore the Eyre Peninsula and then move on; this is where our great adventure began, the more than 2000km-long ride to western Australia!

On the first day of our long ride west, we went through a nice wine region with endless signs for wineries, and lots of countryside with small sleepy towns in between (old building or two, truckers with killer mullets, dogs driven on back of pickups untied), it was starting to feel like outback, frontier even, so fun! We started seeing roadkill "roos" everywhere, which is scary if you're flying on a smaller bike, they're big and one looked like it just got hit! And of course, it was cold again, so we were glad we were able to find an occasional cheap hotel ($60, which is great for Australia, usually we always have to camp).

Our second day was spent riding west around Eyre peninsula: its pretty landscape changes from green lowlands to open forests to outback bush to saltflats, and back again; there are also lots of ocean views and (duh) constant strong, cold winds; There are koalas here too, and we finally saw emus. We ended our day in another small sleepy cute town, at another cheap hotel, where during our sunset walk on the beach, we spotted a sea lion swimming and coming up for air, and then the next morning, a lonely flat shark was hanging out in those same shallows...

On the third day, it was time to start our crossing to the west through the desert.

We woke up early and rode for ten hours - and the notoriously boring ride turned out to be hard, but not really boring!

The road took us along the Great Australian Bight - the long southern coastal route, a road between the ocean and the desert; the cliffy coast is rightfully famous for its beauty, and the desert, even the flat and almost treeless, arid or semi-arid "Nullarbor Plain", is not a dull experience at all!

As you ride on that straight road, you are busy with ducking and holding on when the "road trains" drive by (these big trucks are huge, three trailers long, and their wind blasts are strong!), then greeting each vehicle, locals and travelers, because you're in this together, all the while checking for wildlife by the side of the road; and then there are "roadhouses" every 100-200km, where people from all over the world work in the summer so that they can prolong their stay in Australia (your store clerk deep in the middle of nowhere could be from Russia or Argentina, you never know!) and where you can get food, gas, or pitch your tent (motel rooms cost $125), camping in the dust and with many, many flies...

So while it's not as bad as they say, it is an adventure, you do need to keep and eye on your gas and water supply, and the ride is a weird and exciting mixture of long rides between short stops, straight road, desert and ocean, vast skies, craggy shores, rustic diners, dust and flies... Kyle said he felt like he was in Kenya, just waiting for that giraffe to show up - and Stina felt like she was in the wild west!

We crossed into Western Australia (and had to throw away our fruits and veggies, because of some fly, which if fine - but the next store was 1000km away!) and stopped a little while later - it was 6pm, and we were tired....but then we found out the time changed now, it was only 4:30, and we couldn't stop that early! And so we rode on, for another hour and a half, and ended our day at 6pm new time; it was long-ass day, and though it then rained all night, it stayed warm (finally, warm!) and we were under a roof, so we stayed dry (and yes, super dusty, and covered with flies).

On the last day, it started raining hard an hour in; and it was funny, the huge trucks in the distance looked like geysers, splashing all that water around, and when we passed them, it felt like we were in a car wash!

And then it got even darker, sinister even, and the ocean winds grew really strong, so for half an hour, it was scary and just awful trying to endure insane wind gusts hitting us from the side and buckets of water falling from the sky...it then got better, but stayed cloudy and rainy all day, and after the 90 Mile Straight (which is, well, a long and boring straight road), it got cold as well - and so for the last four hours, which were incredibly boring, we were freezing!

What a day! But we made it, our hosts in Esperance were waiting for us with a warm home and a warm greeting - and a baby joey, but that's another story...

We rested in Esperance, where our hosts took good care of us and of their many birds, and even a joey (who was orphaned as a baby and lost her foot in a trap; she is doing great now and loves her new mom... Kangaroos take years to grow up, and so she spent a long time living in the house and sleeping in mom's bed, and now, she is happy to come home every evening, to be tucked into her blanket on the porch, where she eats dinner and enjoys her pets before going to sleep.).

The beaches in the area are gorgeous, but we were tired of the cold grey weather, so we were happy to ride on, a bit inland where it was sunnier, and also surprisingly green and empty of people (amazing how Australia is still underpopulated, we found that awesome!).

After spending the night in Albany (which was nicely colonial and comfortably full of stores), we then turned north towards Perth; we rode through Denmark (the Australian town of course, not the Scandinavian country), and then we were in a huge forested area, for hours and hours, so pretty!

The narrow quiet road was framed with red dirt and winding through the ancient forest, and we were feeling tiny surrounded by all those tall trees... We stopped in the Valley of the Giants, to take a closer look at the majestic tingle trees (in Walpole-Nornalupe National Park; Giant trees include red, yellow and Rate’s tingles, which are all types of eucalypt, or gum, trees. And while they're no sequoias, they are very tall, up to 55m, and beautiful).

We then moved on, stopping in tiny Pemberton, where our next host and his family have an avocado farm...and these lovely people love meeting moto travelers and having fun! The evening turned into a proper little party, and we left the next day hungover and heavy with gifts (cured meats, homemade olive oil etc.).

We rode on to Perth, and it was finally hot, this time for real and here to stay, and traffic got heavy.

Perth was going to be a place for Stina's reunions - there were not one, but two girls from her Slovenian hometown of Celje staying in the city at the moment!

First, we stopped at one of the wineries in the outskirts, to meet with Zala and her German boyfriend Johannes: they also travel, following the footsteps of Alma Karlin, an incredible woman who was also born in Celje and traveled around the world a century ago, all alone, supporting herself financially on the way (for more, check out Project Alma on Facebook or Instagram). The reunion was sweet but short, they had to return to Denmark for work - but hey, who knows where we'll meet again, maybe even in Celje!

We then arrived to our Perth home, hosted by another girl from Celje (and her family), and it was fun walking around town, remembering stuff from long ago and far away, and sharing travel experiences.

Perth (population 2 million), the most isolated city of its size on the planet, is nice if a little too proper; it's well-off (built by convicts, it boomed after the gold rush hit in the 19th century, and it's now a major port and the seat of the mining industry), clean and spacious, and the weather is perfect (warm to hot, with almost permanent blue skies and with the pleasant Indian Ocean breeze cooling the beaches)... life is good here!

We really liked the nearby port town Fremantle, where life seems even more laid-back: with narrow streets, cute Victorian and Edwardian buildings, markets, beaches, craft beer bars and book stores, it's fun to walk around and chat with friends over a coffee, and because it used to be a hippy area, it's much more full of culture and art projects than Perth proper.

Time to head north, towards the heat, frontier, desert and coast - because as is tradition, we needed to find a cool spot for Kyle's upcoming birthday!

After we went to a Serbian store and got our Smoki and delicious burek, we left Perth and started riding north along the west coast; and right away, we were in the midst of wilderness, with a gas station every 200km or so, Australia is such an empty vast continent!

We rode on the straight endless Indian Ocean Road, through the bush, past sand dunes, and it was getting hotter and hotter, with more and more wind, red dust and flies... We briefly stopped at the recommended Pinnacles Desert, which turned out to be nothing special: just some smaller pillar-shaped limestone formations, a 15-minute stop (for which you have to pay, so it's not really worth it).

We made it to Shark Bay for Kyle's birthday, and again, it was recommended, but nothing unforgettable, plus it was off-season, so the remote town was very sleepy - but we had fun, found amazing seafood at the local pub (the one that closes at 9pm, not 6pm :D ) and had a two-person party in front of our room with the ocean view and Woodford Reserve; plus, there are a bunch of emus strolling through the streets, exactly like that moose in Northern Exposure series, so in the end, it was a fun birthday! :)

NW Australia is very much remote, but the confusing corona news from home was still reaching us - at this point, Slovenia was already in lockdown, and our hearts were getting heavy, we were not really excited anymore and also started to worry about what might come next (Do we need to extend our visa, and will they allow that at all, or want to get rid of us? Will our plane in May take off at all? Will hostels and camps close and we'll have nowhere to stay? What if somebody we love gets sick back home and we can't go to them? All these reasonable questions that would sound completely insane a week ago)… but at the time, we were still doing ok and actually had no choice, we had to keep going; so we kept riding and sharing about our adventure, now also in the hope it would provide a bit of entertainment for all our quarantined friends back home.

We rode on, and it was business as usual (i.e. a long boring day, with a gas station every 200km, and it got even dustier, windier, emptier, and hotter - like a hundred hairdryers blowing in your face), and landed in Coral Bay, a tiny town with a perfect white-sand beach.

Coral Bay is a part of the beautiful 300km-long reef of Ningaloo; the reef is home to a staggering array of marine life – sharks, manta rays, humpback whales, turtles, dugongs, dolphins and more than 200 coral species and 500 fish species.

It’s also easily accessible: in Coral Bay, the camp is right on the beach, where sting rays play in the shallows, and the coral life waits for you 10m further, where water is still only 1-2m deep! It was awesome to snorkel (though you had to be careful not to step on the pretty corals) and enjoy watching the many different fish, big and small, yellow and blue and black...

We didn't go on the whale-shark tour (we were told they are awesome, but Australia is expensive, and the 8-hour tour would cost us over 500 USD), but we did go for a 20-min walk along the sand dunes, to the nearby lagoon which is a shark nursery (not the human-made kind, but the real thing, where shark moms give birth and leave their kids to grow up). We stood in the knee-deep water and watched the 1m-long reef sharks dart around us (man are they quick!) - they're too small to be dangerous, and apparently see humans as something to avoid, but it's definitely thrilling to see those fins plow through the water surface just a few feet away from you!

We then continued towards another awesome spot along the reef, Exmouth - but the weather turned sour on us, and since there was no point in trying to snorkel and camp on a gray rainy day, we started going further north, and ended up having a long hard ride instead.

We did 800km that day, in which we went through rain, winds, a sinister red-dust storm, and then it got very humid and green - and dark, much sooner than usual, so we ended up riding at night (no choice, there was nowhere to stop), and were lucky enough to avoid smashing into a herd of cows hanging out on the road! We ended the crazy day in a shithole camp in a mining town of Karratha, and hardly got any sleep - it was so hot and humid now, even at night!

Heading further north into the tropics, we also started seeing big puddles that the rainstorms left behind, spilling onto and covering half the road at times; hopefully the cyclone season really would end soon, as it should (but it had been acting up this year, they say), so they don't close the roads and leave us stuck up here!

We then rode again all day, through the land of nothing (we saw a few vehicles, a few mining towns, and two lizards) - and we can't tell you how hot it was up here, more so because of the humidity, riding in full gear was a challenge now, and as we stopped at gas stations (now 200-300km apart), we hardly ever had to pee!

We needed a day off, and camping was now out of the question, so we ended up staying at a nice place in Broom (with AC! It was still low season so we were able to afford that, so great!), right by a beautiful beach....

So what do we do now? The world seemed to change completely every 48 hours, and it probably wouldn't be long before the corona effects reached these remote parts as well. But at that moment, nobody around us seemed to care, and we were pretty much quarantined up here anyways (we usually saw less than twenty people a day), so we were going to try to continue according to our awesome plan - go east into the wild Northern Territory, and then inland to the sacred Uluru, and from there to the east coast) - but we were pretty much at peace with the fact that we would have to adjust these plans as needed.

And then it hit, and it was time to write our last report for who knows how long; we named it "How we rode for 2000km - and then flew for 18,000km":

From the west coast, we rode north, towards Darwin, into Northern Territory, for three long hard days:

The first day was probably the hottest so far (which is saying a lot!), but the landscape was already beautiful: lush grassland, red dirt and red rocks, canyons, big baob trees, and all of the sudden, lots of water: rivers, puddles, and swamps were everywhere, it was obviously still the wet season up here.

Roadhouses were the only civilized spots, and they were few and far apart. We made it through Fitzroy, a small town near which the road often gets flooded in the wet season (in which case you can't go on and might have to wait for days for the road to reopen), and ended our 700km-long day in Halls Creek. Again, a room was not an option ($125!) so we had to camp. Luckily, it cooled off in the evening... unluckily though, we got robbed by the Aborigines at night:

Just before we went to sleep, two policemen came and set up a camera near our tent; they said there was nothing to worry about, just a precaution since they'd had some issues lately - but we thought it was weird and put everything of value into our little tent before going to bed, just in case; at 5am, our Aussie camp neighbors woke us up to tell us that we were all robbed! It turned out that it wasn't so bad: they only took our camp knives and nothing at all from the other moto couple (not even their GPS). We were later told by the camp owner that the kids are sent out at night sometimes (because they're minors) and they only take what they find useful - which is mainly money and alcohol (it figures, this town is "dry" and the closest liquor store is hundreds of miles away!). So yes, some of the prejudice is unfortunately true, and it's not a good feeling to worry about being robbed every night spent in the outback!

The second day was just as long and just as hot, and we were now definitely in the frontier country; it felt wild, with a few isolated indigenous communities, wetlands and tropical wildlife all around (you could just tell there were crocks in those muddy rivers!); we rode past endless meadows (with grass that was almost as tall as us), then into a hilly country with nice twisty roads, past many rivers and a few Aboriginal towns, and then into steamy tropics where we were surrounded with crocodile-infested swamps and hit by hundreds of big nasty grasshoppers, and the heat and humidity became hard to bear, especially in full riding gear...

We made it to a decent-looking camp which was next to a creek, and where we not only saw a little crocodile, but were also entertained by hundreds of big black fruit bats, hanging in the trees above us, constantly busy fighting for space.

It was still incredibly hot, and then the many bugs came, so we had to move our tent into the outdoor kitchen, under a fan - and there, we met three fishermen who gave us some of the local fish and entertained us with their stories... We were hot, we were dirty, but we were in the jungle baby, what an adventure!

On day three, we made it to the top, to wetlands of Kakadu and the steamy city of Darwin (the spotted roadkill included a dingo and a big black snake), and finally, exhausted from all the riding and camping and the constant insane heat, we got a hotel room, with a bed and an AC and a shower and Wifi!

But while we rested in civilization, where all was still absolutely normal, we were reading the bizarre corona news from Europe and USA, and started realizing that our awesome plans would have to change radically, and quickly!...which sucked because we were just about to start the most fun part of our trip, plus it was very hard to change anything, we were still at least a week away from the East coast!

At first, we thought we'd take a shortcut back to Melbourne, through the outback, which would allow us to at least still see the famous Kakadu National Park (now only three hours away!) and then even the famous, glorious, sacred mountain of Uluru that stands in the middle of the most remote and untamed Australia - a great finale of this awesome adventure that had to end half-way! But, it became clear that this option would take too much time as well, and anyways, the next day the Aboriginals closed Uluru and started to demand that the Northern Territory close its borders; it was time to drop everything and go, right away, whatever it takes.

It's useless and selfish to complain, so we won't, but we were sad to be ending our incredible trip way too soon, for the reasons that boggle the mind... But life goes on, and we will all have to adjust to this new upside-down reality, plus we already managed to conquer some of these new major challenges: we sold the bikes, found a flight home and even some masks. Namaste, everybody, stay strong! ...And Australia, we'll be back!

What followed was a long bizarre story, but here is an attempt of a short version:

We moved to our host's guest house (thanks again, Dave!) and managed to sell our bikes - cheaply but quickly, and get a plane ticket to Melbourne the day before Darwin airport closed.

In Melbourne, we spent a week looking for flights (some of which we got tickets for but were later canceled, and for some we were on standby and didn't get on), going from our hotel to the airport, then to the grocery store and back to the hotel, to try again the next day...

And then we did get a flight, and things went smoothly and quickly from then on: we landed in Zagreb, got a cab to the border, and then had to walk to the Slovenian side with all our gear and luggage (the cab driver would have to go into self-isolation if he took us any closer) where our friend picked us up, and then we were driven home, sitting on plastic and wearing plastic robes, gloves and masks...and then we were home, exhausted and confused and in self-isolation, but perfectly fine.

We are now in Slovenia, doing well, but it is June already and we are getting fidgety, really hoping that the time when we can post about our next trip is not too far away.

WALKING ACROSS THE SLOVENIAN BORDER

We made it back to Slovenia! And it went relatively smoothly for twenty hours of flight time in this difficult period of traveling! The best part was getting dropped off by the Croatian taxi driver 100m from the Croatian border, so we got to walk to the customs. Then, we had to drag our luggage for another 500m, to Slovenia customs.

A huge thanks to Jana, who picked us up (and wrapped us in masks, gloves and bags before putting us in the car), and our other friends who put us in contact with important people, and everyone else who cheered us on!