The End of an Era

I think Elise and I have become half bogan. The campsite we were assigned at the “Holiday Park” (that’s a euphemism for ‘trailer park’) in suburban Sydney was actually no more than a patch of grass in between the backyards of two permanent residences. There we were, living out of our car and tent surrounded on all sides by all sorts of well-to-do trailer troglodytes. Our neighbour to the right was an exterminator from Tasmania. Known professionally as “The Anteater”, he liked to feed his pet wasps with the standing water in his bird bath. Nice guy, but we decided we needed to move when his trailer got ransacked by various vermin that emerged from the surrounding forest come nightfall. I think wasps weren’t all he was feeding. Anyway, it got me thinking that maybe Elise and I have been staying at too many of these so-called Holiday Parks. Maybe the lifestyle has been rubbing off on us a bit. Maybe we started to develop that trailer park look and they had us pegged when we checked in. That’s why we got grouped in with the local lifers. Either way, it’s definitely time to move on from Oz and leave this camping lifestyle behind for a while. We loved the Canadian-style authentic bush camping here, but we’re really looking forward to Vietnam and the luxury suites there for $30 per night. 

But enough of that. The real purpose of this blog post is to illustrate the extent of our awesomeness. For our readers who’ve been on board throughout the Australia chapter of this trip, you know we had a pretty major capital expenditure back in January in the form of a car. Through some miracle the 1994 Mitsubishi wagon we bought three months ago and drove 8000 km required ZERO maintenance over the course of our ownership (except for the window that Mother Nature smashed the other week). And so we came to the end of the road in Sydney with the task of selling the car before we fly to Vietnam this Thursday. After going a few days with NO bites on our ad, we started getting a bit nervous. Last thing we wanted was to drive OURSELVES to the airport this Thursday and leave the keys in the ignition. Sow we went into town to get some quotes from dealers. We walked into a dealer where lo and behold a car identical to our own was being examined by a travelling couple looking to buy. (Later I would call the couple the Dutch “us”. It was kinda creepy how similar they were to us). “Pssst”, I said. “Wanna buy the exact same car as that for half the price?!” THAT sparked their interest. As fate would have it, they were camping down the road from us at the same campground. We talked business over dinner and wine and two days later we sold the car for $100 less than what we bought it for!! We decided it would be easiest to carpool to the transportation office to transfer the ownership. Elise and I took the front seat on the way there and Dutch us took it on the way back. Camping sans car was no fun after that, especially since we could still see it parked just down the road for the rest of the week. That's ok, though, because later we even sold our camping gear for a cool $80!!

-G

Us and us.

National park, not trailer park. Not bogan.

Getting Elise to cut my hair at the trailer park. Now THAT'S bogan.