Sunny, big, expensive, not as warm as you might think – welcome to Australia. Our road trip began in Melbourne on Christmas Day and ended in Sydney on January 12 in time to see Sons and Daughters play in the Sydney Festival. News Years Eve in Broken Hill and more than 5000 kilometers travelled.
travel / jalan jalan
Birthday on Dempo and Historic Bengkulu
Dempo is a hulk of a mountain, and one of the few peaks in Sumatra over 3,000 metres. It dominates the landscape at the southern end of the Bukit Barisan mountains in South Sumatra, an area that’s important for Sumatran tigers. It’s not an easy mountain to get to, requiring a 6 hour drive from Bengkulu or Palembang.
We joined the four-day Java Lava trip organised to to coincide with Ascension Day (national holiday) – the Friday also happened to be my birthday and we thought that camping in the meadow below Dempo’s crater at 3,000 m would be a good place to spend it. We were also going to test out our new, fabulous Hilleberg tent.