And as all good things must come to an end, our time has come to say a final goodbye to our beloved World Nomad Ambassador Van. It's not difficult to become attached to what has not only been a mode of transport, taking us almost entirely around the country, but also a home, a place to hang ones hat, to rest our weary heads at the end of a long day, a place where we belonged...
It had been wonderful while it lasted and as we cleaned the van for the last time, removing all traces of ourselves for the next lucky ambassadors I had a movie like show real of all the great moments we’d shared over the past 6 weeks run through my head. It had been the trip of a lifetime, and our estimated 10106 kilometres reached a final tally of 10913K’s, our trusty friend delivering us safely to our final destination.
It seems only fitting that I do a statistical round up of the tour figures…
- 42 days on the road
- 24 gigs
- 6 states and territories driven through
- 9 winery visits (and countless bottles of wine consumed)
- 1 blown up PA system
- 5 radio interviews
- 1 twisted ankle
- 3 hitchhikers picked up
- 1 breakdown – our fault, NOT the vans!!!!!
- 13 crocodiles seen in the wild
- 250+ CD’s sold
- Countless friends visited and made
- 2 very happy campers who will miss their beloved van!!!!
So there you have it. We’d like to say massive thankyous to all the wonderful people who’ve made the trip amazing for us and a big special thanks to World Nomads and Travellers Autobarn who have been the best companies anyone could hope to deal with. We were asked to leave behind a gift for the van as a momento of our time as the ambassadors and we thought long and hard and decided we might leave a couple of things to make the new custodians of the van more comfortable. First we left 2 stubby holders, because the van was to be picked up in Darwin and after experiencing the heat of the top end we felt this was a necessity. Secondly we left our coffee plunger and some roasted coffee, items that helped us to get going every single morning and saved us from dreadful tasting servo instant coffees and from wasting funds on exorbitantly priced caffeinated beverages at hoity toity city cafés. We also left a copy of the Hussy Hicks album on the hard drive of the ambassador computer and on the ipod.
Now we’re off to jump on a big floating casino for 10 days to play music for cruise ship holiday makers and tuck into some genuine Vanuatu made Kava while we’re at it. I’ll do my best to continue to document our movements as we leave the ship and go home for a few weeks before taking off on a pretty ambitious world tour… but I think we’ve got some good practise in now, the only real question that needs asking is “Who’s going to give us a van to trip around Europe in?” Hehehehe…
