Since our planned vacation with Markus’s mother fizzelled away last week, we started working on plan B. Nothing as fancy as going to Thailand. But Australia is big and our map still virtually empty.
And since Barbara is able to get a week off too and she has never been to Western Australia, we ended up with the glorious plan to spend a week in south west Western Australia.

And as plans go it started to get a life of its own and leading to strange ideas like buying a 4WD in Queensland and driving it all the way to Perth.
In the end we settle with flying to Adelaide a week earlier, renting a 4WD there, driving all the way to Esperance and picking up Barbara there from the airport.

After spending the whole evening with her booking flights and deciding on and booking the car, we are all but ready to go on our first real 4WD adventure. Though crossing the Nullarbor Plain nowadays might proof less than an adventure than trying to beat boredom. But to spice things up, we will be travelling the last couple hundred kilometres off the highway and into the outback.
It might be time to buy that GPS and satellite phone now.