Well, here we are, at long last, in Darwin, north in the Northern Territory of Australia, our final destination in this country. Yesterday, we turned in Ubi, licensed as "Victoria the Place to Be" UBQ094, our campervan, which we picked up on July 5.
;)
We put an astounding 9105 kilometers (5463 miles) on Ubi in the little bit over two months that we had her. Great things about the caravan culture of Australia for tourists:
1. We got to go wherever we wanted, without regard to bus or train schedules.
2. We met lots of wonderful Australians, primarily people spending their "superannuation," a government-required employee-contributed pension. People from Victoria and Tasmania leave their homes for months at a time, and frequently, people were living in a caravan park for three to twelve months! So there was a built-in neighborhood.
3. We could go anywhere and have our home with us. For example, one night Shirl was in a meeting and Rowan was cooking dinner in the parking lot.
4. We had a hot shower every night, thanks to Australia's great caravan parks, and thanks to Telstra's internet device, we had internet everywhere we were. The only question was whether we had one or two sources of internet. Connected we have been!
5. Ubi put up with all our demands, including powering a heater in the central coast of New South Wales and Queensland and a fan in the far north of the Norther Territory and providing gas burners, fast-paced travel at 78 MPH for hours on end in the hot Outback, and lots of storage places for all our stuff. One of her tyres blew out long from any sign of civilization in the Outback, but she proved to us how great humanity is by providing Frank, our great Good Samaritan trye-changer.
All in all, it was a g'day here in Oz, thanks to Ubi.