Australia is almost on the other side of the world. But is it so different from here?
A disproportionate geography
Australia is just an island. But huge! The largest island in the world and the sixth largest country. Fourteen times the size of the France and comparable in size to the whole Europe. To go around it is therefore neither fast nor simple. With nearly 20,000km, it is a journey comparable to half the circumference of the earth.
Often called “Down Under” for its place in the southern hemisphere, the country is much closer to the equator than the average devlopped countries.
As the map shows, if it were placed in the Northern Hemisphere, its northern end would be close to the latitude of Milan and the southernmost would reach Bangui in Central Africa.
If the distances impress, the altitude variations are not a problem. As the controversial Australian anthem says: “We have boundless plains to share”. And as proof, Mount Kosciuszko, the peak of the country, does not exceed 2230m. This is well below the 3724m of Mount Cook in neighbouring New Zealand.
Climate not mild
The lack of elevation gains has two effects on the climate because the air masses are little stirred when they move: low rainfall and homogeneous and very wide climatic zones. To simplify, there are only three climatic zones that share the country: tropical in the North, arid in the center, temperate in the South.
The tropical climate has only two seasons. Hot and dry from May to October. Then a season that we will kindly call execrable the rest of the year. Humid heat, frequent cyclones and torrential rains that turn the many dirt roads into swampy areas hostile to the biker. For the anecdote, the Aboriginal name of the wetlands fed irregularly by these bad weather has been taken by a well-known brand of surfwear: billabong.
The temperate climate, close to the more mountainous areas, is of the Mediterranean type. It is the most pleasant with mild winters and reasonable heat in the summer. Rainfall is distributed throughout the year, with more rain between December and March around Brisbane, January and June in Sydney. But rainfall can vary considerably from year to year, leading to the floods of 2021 and 2022 but also to periods of drought that caused the giga fires of 2019. Some pyrophytic plants of the Australian bush also favored these fires which ravaged an area greater than 1/4 of France.
The arid climate covers all the center and the West, and constitutes the bulk of the “Outback”. Iron-laden soils take on a reddish color that contrasts with low and scattered vegetation remaining at best with the few dozen centimeters of annual water. The sky is crystalline due to the absence of moisture and pollution. And the violence of the sun is reinforced by the thinness of the ozone layer, whose holes are slowly closing: Australians will still remain exposed to UV rays until 2060. Sunscreen is vital, preferably index-cess volume. This dry continental climate is accompanied by significant temperature variations between day and night: they can exceed 20°C (highest record of 37.4°C in the Eyre region). Early spring (August-September) and late Autumn (April May) are the most pleasant periods.
This arid climate partly explains why the population is small: Germany has three times more inhabitants!
The distribution of the population is very disparate, ranging from depopulated areas in the center to others, close to the ocean in the east and south, where huge metropolises are settled. Five state capitals alone (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide) are home to 14.185 million people, or 55% of the entire population. All other cities have fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, including the political capital, Canberra.
“When are we leaving?”
When you go living outdoors for months, you have to accept the bad weather. At least up to a certain limit. Because a glance at the website of the Australian climate office reveals situations that represent real risks (see red cells):
Obviously, I tried to optimize a trip to avoid rainy periods and have temperatures between 10 ° C mini at night and 35 ° C max during the day. It should not be overlooked that the wind chill increases as the speed raises.
| Town | Measure | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec |
| Port Headland | Max speed wind gusts (km/h) | 171 | 193 | 200 | 154 | 85 | 76 | 82 | 85 | 82 | 93 | 82 | 208 |
| Paraburdoo | Average temperatures max (°C) | 40,7 | 38,9 | 37,0 | 33,9 | 29,1 | 25,2 | 25 | 27,7 | 31,5 | 36,0 | 38,5 | 40,6 |
| Geelong | Average ocean temperature (°C) | 17,9 | 18,3 | 17,9 | 17,3 | 16,1 | 14,4 | 13,7 | 13,3 | 13,4 | 14,1 | 15,8 | 16,8 |
| Thredbo | Average min temperature (°C) | 7,4 | 7,0 | 4,8 | 1,7 | -0,5 | -2,4 | -3,6 | -2,5 | -0,4 | 1,8 | 3,9 | 5,5 |
The period from March to June seems to be suitable, provided spending a night in a hotel in Thredbo where temperatures are low due to altitude. The water temperature can also be cold in places. We will console ourselves by saying that there is less chances to swim among jellyfish.
By starting to visit the south coast in April, we enjoy the end of summer. Then going up to the heat of the North we benefit from the ‘cool’, or at least the dry, of winter.
We can rely on this page to see the evolution of the length of the day according to the place on earth. Knowing that it is really dangerous to ride at night because of the high risk of collision with wild animals, the length of the day is a concern. The trip will take place in autumn or even austral winter. In the north of the country the season does not make a big difference as the proximity of the equator limits the difference in the length of the day between summer and winter. But in the south, where this difference is more pronounced, the days will be reduced to less than 10 hours. It’s short to drive 7 hours with breaks, plus the assembly/disassembly of a tent. It is therefore necessary to start the trip at the earliest in the year to keep days as long as possible.
Time changes
Australia is large enough to have time zones.
The government defines six of them. So we change the time twice going from the West (UTC+8) to the East (UTC +10). And, because it can’t be simple, the center is at UTC+9.30. There are even unofficial schedules (45-minute lag in the Nullarbor).
In addition, the southern part of the country is far enough from the equator that there are variations in the length of the day between summer and winter. As the seasons are reversed compared to Europe, these areas have a summer schedule that adds one hour to the normal schedule at the time we remove one. Thus, France has a 10 hours difference with Sydney during winter time, but only 8 hours between the 1st Sunday of April and the 1st Sunday of October.
What you have to remember is that, to be sure to have a French on the phone without pulling him out of bed, you have to call after 6pm.