Wander out Yonder – Our Western Australian Road Trip
The plan was a two-week holiday in Western Australia, flying into Exmouth, picking up a hire car, and driving south to Perth. This was the farthest we’d been from home in 15 months, and coincidentally, our last trip pre-Covid was to Western Australia. Despite case numbers in Australia being extremely low, we had a nagging feeling that someone would sneeze and Western Australia would shut their borders and kill our holiday plans.
In case you don’t want to read this sequentially, here are some shortcuts to specific parts of the trip:
A week before we were due to leave, Victoria had an outbreak and went into lockdown. Almost immediately, Western Australia shut their borders to Victoria. There were no cases in New South Wales, but a Covid positive person from Victoria went on holiday in New South Wales and I began to panic. At 10pm Tuesday night I called Qantas and changed our booking to the next available flight, which was in 12 hours. It’s a damn good thing we have a packing spreadsheet.
For those of you who are wondering, Andy’s fabulous shirt is from Lowes, and he purchased it on a previous trip where he forgot to pack shirts. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We completed our border G2G pass from the lounge in Sydney and booked the Doubletree on the Perth waterfront for one night. We were upgraded to business class, but the five hour flight seemed endless and there were no blankets or pillows or pre-departure bevvies. First world problems, I know!
Arrival in Perth was extremely controlled and efficient. People with completed G2G passes deplaned first, and in small groups so as not to overwhelm the checkpoint. We got a squirt of hand sanitiser and a temperature check, then they checked our G2G pass and directed us to a police interview where they asked if we’d been to Victoria in the past 14 days and then welcomed us to their state. Though we weren’t breaking any rules, we felt oddly elated to have been admitted to Western Australia – kind of like an American travelling to Cuba pre-2016.
The Doubletree is practically new and the rooftop bar had a great view of the Swan River.
A quick note on trip planning. We planned this trip two months in advance. Accommodation was extremely difficult to find, and some tours that we wanted to do were already booked. The real shocker though was hire (rental) car prices! Initially I booked our outbound flight to Perth and our return from Exmouth, assuming that we’d drive north. When I went to book the car, a 15 day rental was over $4000. That isn’t a typo. Companies reduced their fleets at the beginning of Covid and are struggling to rebuild them as there is a shortage of cars. I was able to find a car going the other direction (Exmouth the Perth) for a normal price, so all I had to do was change our flights (which was free because Qantas has waived all change fees for a while).
Thus, we couldn’t continue on to Exmouth until Monday because we didn’t have accommodation or a car, so we quickly brainstormed what to do until then. The weather looked good to the East, with clear skies and no moon, so we decided to head to Lake Ballard. It was a holiday weekend in WA, and because Australians can’t travel overseas availability was extremely limited so we wound up impulsively hiring a giant campervan.
We’ve been married for over 20 years and have been camping once (in Wilson’s Prom) and rented a caravan once (in New Zealand). Continue reading…
