October 2, 2003

Whoa – just before you get too excited I’m NOT 41, and I’m not committing fraud. But over the last couple of days I’ve started to wonder how people are looking at us as we travel around.

The 41 year old bit comes from a conversation one evening in Fiji, when one of the other travellers at dinner decided I must be 41 – at least. Now I’m not usually the vain type (I don’t think, but then again...), but it came as a bit of shock to me. I always thought that I looked a young 38 – for that is my real age – but obviously the past years have been wearing on me. Or maybe it was the dim lanterns we had for illumination. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were 40 and felt bad about it. Yes, that must be it. I don’t really look 41, and somebody of 40 was so jealous of me they sought to wound me in the most harmful way... ;-)

So then, the ‘fraud’ bit. Since we arrived in Sydney, and checked into our hostel (which is a ‘real’ backpackers hostel by any definition of the word) I’ve noticed other backpackers looking at us in a strange way. Almost as though they think that we don’t belong in ‘their’ world.

Here they are, doing their adventurous round the world travel thing, and reaching out to new frontiers, and then this family turn up obviously on holiday, because that’s what families do. And this family have the cheek to stay in a proper backpackers hostel, instead of staying in a hotel where holidaymakers are supposed to stay. You can almost see them thinking that we don’t belong there. And yet, we’re doing the same travelling that we did 10 years ago, staying in the same kind of places, and having the same kind of adventures and pretty much doing the same kind of things – and when we did that we were part of it all. When you get talking to other backpackers, and you get past the “You’ve flown a long way for a two week holiday” bit, then things change, and they open up more. But until then, I feel as if we’re treated as interlopers – there’s all these 23/24 year old backpackers, on their first big adventure, and then there’s somebody like their Mum and Dad, pretending to be doing the same thing. Oh well, perhaps I’ll just have to get dreadlocks and wear tie dye, and at least then they’d know that we’re not typical tourists (mind you, what on earth would they think of us!). Anyway, just to give you an idea, there’s a couple of photo’s for you – one at the airport in Fiji (do we look just like tourists or what?) and one of the minibus dropping us at Fiji airport. Now, we don’t look like proper backpackers, because the minibus driver wasn’t a Kiwi, and we didn’t have a 4 foot wooden carving hanging on our backpack – still, got time to fix that in Oz with a didgeridoo!

We have been confidently telling everybody that we’re going to buy a campervan in Oz – it’s the cheapest way for four of us to get around and it will provide an exciting part of the whole adventure for the girls. We’d even decided what colours we were going to paint it if it needed a touch up (white with coloured dots – just like a Boden catalogue!). We’d worked out whether we’d name it after the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo, or something else. And Charlotte had been sketching out interior designs so that everybody could sleep without putting their foot into somebody’s ear.

Arriving in Sydney, one of our first ports of call was Kings Cross Car Market – 5 floors down in the underground car park lurk backpackers selling their cars and campervans. There were about 15 vans there, but it served to highlight that we’re not a normal backpacking couple. There were none that would accommodate 4 people easily (although one enterprising backpacker piled 3 of his mates in to demonstrate how four people could sleep in the double bed!). The choice was everything from 20 year old VW Combivans to 10 year old Toyota vans. The Combivans were definitely the most attractive to look at, but they really wouldn’t fit us all in without nerves being badly frayed by the end of week one. The vans were all priced between $3,500 to $6,000 (£1,400 to £2,400) – the closer the sellers come to their departure date, the bigger the price cuts.

But as there wasn’t anything we went along the road to talk to the dealers on Williams Street – these are professionals, that make a living selling campervans to travellers. Sadly, they had cars that mostly looked as if they’d fall apart next week, except for one exceptional one, ideal for a family of four, costing $20,000 (£8,000 ish). The problem with that one is the resale value – typically in 4 months time when we come to sell we could lose $6-8,000 on it – and there would be a danger of losing more if we couldn’t find a buyer (and as there’s not many families travelling like us, we’d be in a fix). So we were a bit stumped. Then we wandered along to Kings X Campervans, which rents vans out, and spent the afternoon looking, negotiating, thinking, negotiating, hesitating and then finally closing a deal to rent a van.

We decided to hire for 2 months, until December, which will cost us $4,500 (at $69 a day). Then in December we’ll need a car that seats 6, when Gloria and Michael (Sarah’s parents) join us. We can’t get a campervan with 6 seats, so we’re going to have to hire a different vehicle anyway – and if we bought our own campervan we’d be stuck with 2 vehicles to move around. So all in all, we’ve got a good arrangement – we’ll end up paying less in campervan rental than we’d lose by buying and selling (with no risk!), and we’ll end up hiring a car in December for the extended family travelling. And then in January we’ll take a look at what we’re doing, and then decide what we need for the last month in Oz.

So all the planning we did – about painting etc - was wasted, as we won’t be allowed to paint somebody else’s van!

We felt good at the end of the day, because we’d made another step forward on our travels, and we have a positive move forward to leave Sydney on Saturday morning. We'll also have somewhere to 'settle down' for a couple of months (even though it'll be moving, the inside will seem like a static home)