Well I can only apologise for the lack of writing on this blog recently. I guess coming home from Australia and how busy it's been is a reason, it's always hard to keep up with writing it. I shall endeavour to update this page more frequently from now on, insteadof always writing about things I've done several weeks (or months) after doign them.
Keep looking for new updates on the last month in Australia and the last 2 months spent back home and elsewhere.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The End of Semester 2
Sadly time as always flew by and it wasn't long before my last semester in Australia drew to an end. As always plenty of stuff was going on during this time.
Study this semester was a little different, owing to the fact that Adelaide Uni altered the structure of modules so we had almost twiced as much work to do! I ended up having an exam, an essay, museum project and a hell of a lot of reading to do all in one week! And the odules weren't structured very well either. I think the university got plenty of complaints about the changes, including some from me!
Lots of fun things were going on to. My house was as crazy as ever, with people always being round and us having a laugh. I'd certainly found a great house with some great friends to add to my list of friends from last semester.
Sadly the last Jeffcott Party I went to was stopped really early by the police. I only remembered small parts of the night as I was completely drunk! Some of our friends hosted a Masterchef themed party, and everyone went dressed as their favourite judge, so naturally most of us went with overhanging guts and cravats on!
As the weather got colder, and people started leaving for travels, it soon became clear that the year was drawing to end, so I attended several 'last' meals, parties and stuff, and kept saying goodbye to people over and over again.
Once all the exams and essays were over, I went on my last bit of travelling for a couple of weeks before heading home.
Study this semester was a little different, owing to the fact that Adelaide Uni altered the structure of modules so we had almost twiced as much work to do! I ended up having an exam, an essay, museum project and a hell of a lot of reading to do all in one week! And the odules weren't structured very well either. I think the university got plenty of complaints about the changes, including some from me!
Lots of fun things were going on to. My house was as crazy as ever, with people always being round and us having a laugh. I'd certainly found a great house with some great friends to add to my list of friends from last semester.
Sadly the last Jeffcott Party I went to was stopped really early by the police. I only remembered small parts of the night as I was completely drunk! Some of our friends hosted a Masterchef themed party, and everyone went dressed as their favourite judge, so naturally most of us went with overhanging guts and cravats on!
As the weather got colder, and people started leaving for travels, it soon became clear that the year was drawing to end, so I attended several 'last' meals, parties and stuff, and kept saying goodbye to people over and over again.
Once all the exams and essays were over, I went on my last bit of travelling for a couple of weeks before heading home.
Barossa Valley 28th May
So I finally ended up going to one of Australia's premier wine regions. I went on a tour with Anders, Maja, Sofia, Kevin and Hanna through this beautiful area of SA, only a hour or so drive from Adelaide.
We visited four wineries, including Wolf Blass, one of the biggest wineries in Australia, where we tried wine worth about $250 a bottle! Vine Crest was probably the best winery, as it was small and understated, with some fantastic wines on offer.
We also visited the LARGEST ROCKING HORSE IN THE WORLD! Which really was huge, thew size of a large house! And also a rather famous tree, where one of SA's pioneering German immigrants and his family lived before they could afford an actual house. After a slap up lunch, we finished the day at thew Whispering Wall; a dam with interesting acoust properties. You could talk to people a good couple of hundred metres away as if they were right next to you.
Another great outing had by all.
We visited four wineries, including Wolf Blass, one of the biggest wineries in Australia, where we tried wine worth about $250 a bottle! Vine Crest was probably the best winery, as it was small and understated, with some fantastic wines on offer.
We also visited the LARGEST ROCKING HORSE IN THE WORLD! Which really was huge, thew size of a large house! And also a rather famous tree, where one of SA's pioneering German immigrants and his family lived before they could afford an actual house. After a slap up lunch, we finished the day at thew Whispering Wall; a dam with interesting acoust properties. You could talk to people a good couple of hundred metres away as if they were right next to you.
Another great outing had by all.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Kangaroo Island 24 - 26th April
During mid-semester break I went on a three day topur with Groovy Grape (same company as with the Outback trip) to Kangaroo Island. This island is about a 90 min drive south from Adelaide, and then a 45 min ferry ride. Kangaroo island has its place in South Australian history for many reasons. Here's some interesting facts about the island:
1. It was the site of the first settlement in South Australia. Kingscote, the largest town on the island, is older than Adelaide by a few months. That's a pretty good superlative to have!
2. Humans are the minority on the island. Only 4500 people live there (and over half of them in Kingscote) whereas there's about 30,000 koalas and kangaroos and around 1 MILLION wallabies. These large numbers are due to the minimal human presence on the island (at least 1/3 is national park or reserve) and because there's no introduced pests like rabbits or foxes on the island.
3. It's named Kangaroo Island by Flinders, who discovered the island in 1802, and due to the abundance of kangaroos, he named the island after them.
4. There were no recorded Aborigines living on the island when Flinders discovered it. Local Aborigines on the mainland refer to KI as the land of the dead, as they believe it's where spirits go to rest.
5. While exploring the coast, Finders's crew encountered a French expedition led by Baudin (at a place now called Encounter Bay). Both teams were unknowingly exploring the island at the same time. This is why the North coast has English names (like Stokes Bay) and the South coast has French names (like Cape du Coedic).
So it's certainly a worthwhile place to visit. On the first day after arriving on the island, one of the first places we visited was Clifford's Honey Farm. Kangaroo Island is the ONLY (another superlative!) in the world where pure Ligurian Honey Bees live. They were brought over bybeekeepers from Liguria in Italy, and since then the native bees have interbred with others, and a disease wiped many of them out. So as a result of this, KI is the only place where you can get them, and the penalties for bringing foreign bees and bee products over to the island are severe (penalties can reach $10000, just under 5000!) The hoeny was fantastic.
We also visited the Eucalytus Distillery, where oils, creams, etc are made using traditional methods.
The weather wasn't great for most of the trip, it was very windy and rained on and off during the day, but that didn't stop us seeing a lot of great stuff. On the first day we also visited the beautfiul Stokes Bay and Vivonne Bay, before heading West to our stop for the night. We stayed at a small, rustic farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Surrounding the house on all sides was native bushland and farmland. We all got to know everyone on the bus and were pestered constantly by the very tame possum, which our guide, Ben, called Pete.
We started Day 2 with sandboarding. KI has plenty of inland sandunes, and Little Sahara is one of the biggest. It's the same as snowboarding, with one obvious difference...I wasn't that good at it, but it was still fun! That day we also went to Seal Bay; a protected beach area for seals and sea lions. We saw plenty of sealions roaming the beaches and swimming in the sea, and it was a great experience, despite the cold winds and rain! We also went on a tour of the Kelly Caves, and went on a windy, windy walk down the Rocky River Gorge to a stunning bit of unspoiled coastline. That evening we stayed at a holiday campsite just outside the Flinders Chase National Park.
We started day 3 at the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw a few koalas, wallabees and kangaroos. KI actually has its own species of kangaroo (fantastically called the Kangaroo Island Kangaroo...). We then headed into the Flinders Chase National Park, and visited the Remarkable Rocks. These are a group of volcanic rocks on a headland. Over the centuries, the wind and see have carved out some remarkable (:P) shapes on the rocks, which made for an interesting sight. Further South at Cape du Coedic, we saw Admiral's Arch; another amazing rock formation. The best thing about this area were the New Zealand Fur Seals which were sleeping all around us. It was another great encounter with some local wildlife.
We then headed to the eastern side of the island in time to get the ferry back to the mainland. KI was definitely worth the visit. A big thank you goes to Ben our tour guide, and the other people on the tour for making it a great weekend!
1. It was the site of the first settlement in South Australia. Kingscote, the largest town on the island, is older than Adelaide by a few months. That's a pretty good superlative to have!
2. Humans are the minority on the island. Only 4500 people live there (and over half of them in Kingscote) whereas there's about 30,000 koalas and kangaroos and around 1 MILLION wallabies. These large numbers are due to the minimal human presence on the island (at least 1/3 is national park or reserve) and because there's no introduced pests like rabbits or foxes on the island.
3. It's named Kangaroo Island by Flinders, who discovered the island in 1802, and due to the abundance of kangaroos, he named the island after them.
4. There were no recorded Aborigines living on the island when Flinders discovered it. Local Aborigines on the mainland refer to KI as the land of the dead, as they believe it's where spirits go to rest.
5. While exploring the coast, Finders's crew encountered a French expedition led by Baudin (at a place now called Encounter Bay). Both teams were unknowingly exploring the island at the same time. This is why the North coast has English names (like Stokes Bay) and the South coast has French names (like Cape du Coedic).
So it's certainly a worthwhile place to visit. On the first day after arriving on the island, one of the first places we visited was Clifford's Honey Farm. Kangaroo Island is the ONLY (another superlative!) in the world where pure Ligurian Honey Bees live. They were brought over bybeekeepers from Liguria in Italy, and since then the native bees have interbred with others, and a disease wiped many of them out. So as a result of this, KI is the only place where you can get them, and the penalties for bringing foreign bees and bee products over to the island are severe (penalties can reach $10000, just under 5000!) The hoeny was fantastic.
We also visited the Eucalytus Distillery, where oils, creams, etc are made using traditional methods.
The weather wasn't great for most of the trip, it was very windy and rained on and off during the day, but that didn't stop us seeing a lot of great stuff. On the first day we also visited the beautfiul Stokes Bay and Vivonne Bay, before heading West to our stop for the night. We stayed at a small, rustic farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Surrounding the house on all sides was native bushland and farmland. We all got to know everyone on the bus and were pestered constantly by the very tame possum, which our guide, Ben, called Pete.
We started Day 2 with sandboarding. KI has plenty of inland sandunes, and Little Sahara is one of the biggest. It's the same as snowboarding, with one obvious difference...I wasn't that good at it, but it was still fun! That day we also went to Seal Bay; a protected beach area for seals and sea lions. We saw plenty of sealions roaming the beaches and swimming in the sea, and it was a great experience, despite the cold winds and rain! We also went on a tour of the Kelly Caves, and went on a windy, windy walk down the Rocky River Gorge to a stunning bit of unspoiled coastline. That evening we stayed at a holiday campsite just outside the Flinders Chase National Park.
We started day 3 at the Hanson Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, where we saw a few koalas, wallabees and kangaroos. KI actually has its own species of kangaroo (fantastically called the Kangaroo Island Kangaroo...). We then headed into the Flinders Chase National Park, and visited the Remarkable Rocks. These are a group of volcanic rocks on a headland. Over the centuries, the wind and see have carved out some remarkable (:P) shapes on the rocks, which made for an interesting sight. Further South at Cape du Coedic, we saw Admiral's Arch; another amazing rock formation. The best thing about this area were the New Zealand Fur Seals which were sleeping all around us. It was another great encounter with some local wildlife.
We then headed to the eastern side of the island in time to get the ferry back to the mainland. KI was definitely worth the visit. A big thank you goes to Ben our tour guide, and the other people on the tour for making it a great weekend!
Tons and tons of Easter food!
We celebrated Easter big style here in Adelaide. On Easter Saturday, myself and several friends spent the afternoon cooking food from our different countries. A few hours later we had a smorgasbord of food to eat. Hanna's entire kitchen work surface was covered in Swedish, Chinese and British dishes.
Claire and I (the Brits) rustled up a shepherd's pie (relatively easy) and then made a teacle sponge for dessert. I was surprised how good the dessert turned out considering we got the recipe slightly wrong, which meant it took a good hour longer to cook than it should have!
We really stuffed ourselves with all the delicious food. We managed to turn out around 7 main courses and 3 desserts! Who says students are bad cooks? Top points went to Anders for presentation (his eggs topped with prawns etc looked great) and Sandra's berry crumble was devine!
It was a great evening having fun with good friends.
Claire and I (the Brits) rustled up a shepherd's pie (relatively easy) and then made a teacle sponge for dessert. I was surprised how good the dessert turned out considering we got the recipe slightly wrong, which meant it took a good hour longer to cook than it should have!
We really stuffed ourselves with all the delicious food. We managed to turn out around 7 main courses and 3 desserts! Who says students are bad cooks? Top points went to Anders for presentation (his eggs topped with prawns etc looked great) and Sandra's berry crumble was devine!
It was a great evening having fun with good friends.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Pizza like you've never seen it before...
A couple of weeks ago, a few of us went to Maja and Sofia's house to make pizza. Of course, we all made some really good savoury ones, with a wide variety of toppings. It was another good evening with friends.
An unusual aspect to the evening's festivities was what we ate for dessert. We decided that pizza would naturally be the best thing to have, so we made a pizza with fruits on it, which was basically just like a pie without any pastry over the top. We had some pizza dough left, I'd brought some Tim Tams (Australia's answer to Penguins), and Kevin had brought marshmallows and gummie sweets. What emerged out of the oven a few minutes later was a sugary masterpiece of pizza dough, custard, sweets and chocolate. It was so wrong, yet it was so right at the same time!
Most of us could barely manage one tiny slice, but Kevin and I couldn't resist eating another. Who would've thought that pizza could be so disgusting, yet so good at the same time. For those of you who've watched "The Biggest Loser" or any other fat people getting thin TV shows, this pizza was the ultimate temptation!
I left buzzing from all the sugar coursing through my body. One thing's for sure, I'll never think of pizza in the same way again!
An unusual aspect to the evening's festivities was what we ate for dessert. We decided that pizza would naturally be the best thing to have, so we made a pizza with fruits on it, which was basically just like a pie without any pastry over the top. We had some pizza dough left, I'd brought some Tim Tams (Australia's answer to Penguins), and Kevin had brought marshmallows and gummie sweets. What emerged out of the oven a few minutes later was a sugary masterpiece of pizza dough, custard, sweets and chocolate. It was so wrong, yet it was so right at the same time!
Most of us could barely manage one tiny slice, but Kevin and I couldn't resist eating another. Who would've thought that pizza could be so disgusting, yet so good at the same time. For those of you who've watched "The Biggest Loser" or any other fat people getting thin TV shows, this pizza was the ultimate temptation!
I left buzzing from all the sugar coursing through my body. One thing's for sure, I'll never think of pizza in the same way again!
Monday, April 20, 2009
Kings of Leon (11th March)
The band of the moment really is the Kings of Leon. They've just about reached super stardom and are becoming a household name. This great band performed in Adelaide and I got the chance to go and see them!
Tickets for their one night only performance in Adelaide went on sale at the end of November last year and were sold out in a few days, but that didn't stop my friend, Tiago. He went to the ticket office every day when he got back to Adelaide, and was able to pick up two last minute tickets. After asking a few people, I was the first to say yes, so off we went to see the Kings of Leon.
The band performed at the Adelaide Oval, which wasn't the biggest concert venue they've performed at I'm usre, but that didn't stop the place having a great atmosphere. Thousands of people were packed into the arena, waiting for the performance to begin.
Whenever I see a band live for the first time, I'm always worried that they'll be crap. So many bands these days sound good on the radio, but sound terrible live. This certainly wasn't the case with these guys. They were more than sensational, and they completely blew my mind. I was in a state of amazement for the whole concert and for a couple of days afterwards!
The band played all the songs they should have, and more, and the audience was in a state of ecstasy for the whole time. Certainly a concert I'll never forget.
Tickets for their one night only performance in Adelaide went on sale at the end of November last year and were sold out in a few days, but that didn't stop my friend, Tiago. He went to the ticket office every day when he got back to Adelaide, and was able to pick up two last minute tickets. After asking a few people, I was the first to say yes, so off we went to see the Kings of Leon.
The band performed at the Adelaide Oval, which wasn't the biggest concert venue they've performed at I'm usre, but that didn't stop the place having a great atmosphere. Thousands of people were packed into the arena, waiting for the performance to begin.
Whenever I see a band live for the first time, I'm always worried that they'll be crap. So many bands these days sound good on the radio, but sound terrible live. This certainly wasn't the case with these guys. They were more than sensational, and they completely blew my mind. I was in a state of amazement for the whole concert and for a couple of days afterwards!
The band played all the songs they should have, and more, and the audience was in a state of ecstasy for the whole time. Certainly a concert I'll never forget.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Womadelaide (8th March)
One of the bigger Fringe events was Womadelaide, a three day music festival with acts from all over the world and all genres were represented.
Myself and a few others went to the festival on the last day, because we really wanted to see The Cat Empire, one of my favourite Aussie bands. The first song they played was "In My Pocket", which many of us listened to along the Great Ocean Road and in Tasmania. if you've never heard of them then you should check them out. They're a great mix of ska, reggae, jazz and rock, all blended together in their own unique style.
After The Cat Empire had finished, we went to see some other performances. The Andi and George Band was fun and they had some good songs, and African DJ Dino Moran was fantastic, and he was a good end to the festival.
Look out for these artists, they were all really good!
Myself and a few others went to the festival on the last day, because we really wanted to see The Cat Empire, one of my favourite Aussie bands. The first song they played was "In My Pocket", which many of us listened to along the Great Ocean Road and in Tasmania. if you've never heard of them then you should check them out. They're a great mix of ska, reggae, jazz and rock, all blended together in their own unique style.
After The Cat Empire had finished, we went to see some other performances. The Andi and George Band was fun and they had some good songs, and African DJ Dino Moran was fantastic, and he was a good end to the festival.
Look out for these artists, they were all really good!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Coopers Brewery (6th March)
Coopers has got to be the best beer in all of Australia. People from home still ask me how Fosters and XXXX is, but I can tell you now that they're crap and non-existent. Fosters is sold virtually nowhere in Australia, and XXXX is just awful beer. Coopers is the best, and I've been told that you can buy it in Tescos!
Thomas got back from Perth the previous day and joined me on a tour of Coopers Brewery in Adelaide. It was great to find out about the brewing process. Our guide told us some rather interesting facts about Coopers and beer in general. For example, brown glass acts as a filter meaning that less sunlight gets into the bottle, and your beer lasts longer in the sun!
Our guide kept praising Coopers over all the other Australian beers. It's the only brewer whihc is family owned and not part of a chain/parent company, and it's the only brewer which doesn't use chemicals or artificial products.
At the end of the tour we had a tasting of all of Coopers' delicious beers. The tour was great and it only cost $20, and all that money went to charity. I highly recommend you do it!
Thomas got back from Perth the previous day and joined me on a tour of Coopers Brewery in Adelaide. It was great to find out about the brewing process. Our guide told us some rather interesting facts about Coopers and beer in general. For example, brown glass acts as a filter meaning that less sunlight gets into the bottle, and your beer lasts longer in the sun!
Our guide kept praising Coopers over all the other Australian beers. It's the only brewer whihc is family owned and not part of a chain/parent company, and it's the only brewer which doesn't use chemicals or artificial products.
At the end of the tour we had a tasting of all of Coopers' delicious beers. The tour was great and it only cost $20, and all that money went to charity. I highly recommend you do it!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Back in Adelaide
It was so good to be back in Adelaide after being away for so long. I didn't realise how much I loved the place until I went back. On the last day in Cairns I was really excited, and felt like a child on Christmas Eve! Here's what happened during the first few days I was back.
The Flight
I was supposed to be flying out of Cairns at about 6am on 23rd Feb, arriving in Adelaide at about 10am. However, JetStar (the airline) made a monumental cock up. To cut a long story short, that flight was cancelled. Myself and my fellow irritated passengers were transferred to Qantas. I thought that I'd be back in Adelaide only a few hours later than intended, but this wasn't the case. My first flight was to Brisbane, and then I got a flight from there to Adelaide. I arrived ELEVEN HOURS later than I was supposed to. The most depressing thing was that all we got in compensation was a voucher worth $8!
House Hunting
As I couldn't afford to stay in my house while travelling, I had to move out before leaving Adelaide. This meant the first week back was largely taken up by finding somewhere new to live. I certainly didn't want to stay in the hostel I was in forever (even though it was a good one). I ended up looking at seven houses, and it was hard work calling landlords and travelling to one house after another. All of them weren't what i was looking for, they were either too shabby, too far away, the people weren't good or supposedly essential things (such as a living room) were missing.
However the last house I looked at was definitely the best house! The second I went inside I knew I wanted to live there. It's in a great location, in the city! That means I can easily get everywhere without having to walk for ages or get a bus. The house is right near the bustling Central Market and Chinatown, so I'm really close to one of the best areas of the city. The house itself is awesome. It's modern and has everything you could possibly need. And my housemates are a great bunch. Toby and Sarah from Australia, and Owen and Lyndsey from the US are really cool, easy going people to live with, and they have some great friends that have become my friends too.
Meeting up with old friends
The best thing about being back in Adelaide was seeing friends again. They say that if you spend a day in Adelaide and don't bump into at least one person you know, then you don't know enough people! I met up with most people who were left in Adelaide from last semester, and even though a large proportion of us went home, there is still a lot of us left here. Meeting all these people from different parts of the world has been an experience in itself. It was great to share stories with everyone about how they spent their summer.
The Fringe
Sleepy Adelaide woke up! Febraury and March is packed with activities going on in Adelaide. This is when South Australia lives up to its nickname as The Festival State. The Adelaide Fringe is the second biggest cultural festival after Edinburgh, and it all started with a parade and concert just east of the city. Some of us went to see this, and it was a good evening. The parade lasted for a couple of hours as people from all the events happening during the Fringe paraded down the streets, and the concert lasted well into the night.
Look out for entries soon on more crazy goings on in Adelaide!
The Flight
I was supposed to be flying out of Cairns at about 6am on 23rd Feb, arriving in Adelaide at about 10am. However, JetStar (the airline) made a monumental cock up. To cut a long story short, that flight was cancelled. Myself and my fellow irritated passengers were transferred to Qantas. I thought that I'd be back in Adelaide only a few hours later than intended, but this wasn't the case. My first flight was to Brisbane, and then I got a flight from there to Adelaide. I arrived ELEVEN HOURS later than I was supposed to. The most depressing thing was that all we got in compensation was a voucher worth $8!
House Hunting
As I couldn't afford to stay in my house while travelling, I had to move out before leaving Adelaide. This meant the first week back was largely taken up by finding somewhere new to live. I certainly didn't want to stay in the hostel I was in forever (even though it was a good one). I ended up looking at seven houses, and it was hard work calling landlords and travelling to one house after another. All of them weren't what i was looking for, they were either too shabby, too far away, the people weren't good or supposedly essential things (such as a living room) were missing.
However the last house I looked at was definitely the best house! The second I went inside I knew I wanted to live there. It's in a great location, in the city! That means I can easily get everywhere without having to walk for ages or get a bus. The house is right near the bustling Central Market and Chinatown, so I'm really close to one of the best areas of the city. The house itself is awesome. It's modern and has everything you could possibly need. And my housemates are a great bunch. Toby and Sarah from Australia, and Owen and Lyndsey from the US are really cool, easy going people to live with, and they have some great friends that have become my friends too.
Meeting up with old friends
The best thing about being back in Adelaide was seeing friends again. They say that if you spend a day in Adelaide and don't bump into at least one person you know, then you don't know enough people! I met up with most people who were left in Adelaide from last semester, and even though a large proportion of us went home, there is still a lot of us left here. Meeting all these people from different parts of the world has been an experience in itself. It was great to share stories with everyone about how they spent their summer.
The Fringe
Sleepy Adelaide woke up! Febraury and March is packed with activities going on in Adelaide. This is when South Australia lives up to its nickname as The Festival State. The Adelaide Fringe is the second biggest cultural festival after Edinburgh, and it all started with a parade and concert just east of the city. Some of us went to see this, and it was a good evening. The parade lasted for a couple of hours as people from all the events happening during the Fringe paraded down the streets, and the concert lasted well into the night.
Look out for entries soon on more crazy goings on in Adelaide!
Cape Tribulation (21st and 22nd Feb)
The last part of my journey was to Cape Tribulation. As we no longer had the car, and because the roads got worse north of Cairns, Thomas and I went on a really good two day tour with Cape Trib Connections.We were picked up from Gilligan's by our tour guide, Peter. This guy was really chilled and new a hell of a lot of stuff about northern Queensland, but he wasn't boring to listen to like some of the guides I've met while in Australia. He repeatedly told us to "Kick back, relax, take in the secnery, no worries guys. Let's Do It". This phrase (and variants of it) was said by Peter at the end of every little thing he said whilst driving.
On the first day, after being instructed to kick back and relax, we drove north of Cairns, and a few minutes later civilization, according to Peter, had ended, as we drove past the most northerly McDonalds in Australia!
We headed to the first part of the Daintree National Park, which was Mossman Gorge. Now, some of you might ask, "Why visit the Daintree and Cape Tribulation?" Well, you really should, because:
It is the oldest continuously growing rainforest in the world. It's been there for about 120 million years.
It contains some of the oldest plant species in the world. There were 400 million year old trees and mosses which have been on earth for around 1 billion (yes billion) years!
It's home to the Golden Orbe Spider; the largest web-weaving spider in the world, and can grow to the size of dinner plates.
It's home to the Hercules Moth; the largerst moth in the world (one wing is the size of a dinner plate).
And it's also home to the Jackfruit, the world's largest fruit.
Two thirds of Australia's bird species call it home (including the rare Cassowary).
One hectare of the rainforest contains more different plant species than the whole North American continent.
Everything north of Cape Tribulation has depressing names (e.g. Mount Sorrow, Cape Fear, Mount Misery) as Captain Cook had really bad luck on this part of his expedition. Tribulation is an old word for trouble, and Cook named the area Cape Trib because this is where his troubles began.
There were many other interesting facts, but there's too many to list here! Mossman Gorge had some spectacular rapids, with massive boulders littering the rapids' path. Here's where it started chucking it down with rain, as Peter took us on a tour of the rainforest, pointing out all the amazing things there were to see. Mossman village itself had an interesting story to tell. It's home to a large Evangelical Christian community, who share the village with a large nudist resort!
That day we also crossed the Daintree River. In order to cross you had to go on a cargo ferry. It would seem simple to construct a bridge over the river, but as the ferry generates $30 million a year, I doubt that will ever happen! On the other side of the river, we entered the Cape Trib area, which is infamous for its lawlessness. There's no police station north of the river, asnd they only visit it a couple of times a month, so minor crimes like drink driving are common.
It was then a short rainy drive to our hostel, the Cape Trib Beach House. The whole place was surrounded by the rainforest, and giant spiders had found homes in every corner. Thomas and I went down to the beach to see Cape Trib itself. We had made it! 'Adelaide to Cape Tribulation' was over!That night we went on a fantastic night tour through the rainforest. Being wet season, it was a great time to see wildilfe, as they all came out at night after the rain. We saw a python, lizards, a myriad of different frogs and creepy crawlies. The spiders were fascinating, the most interesting being the trap-door spider and net-casting spider. We also saw some glow-in-the dark mushrooms. We turned of our torches, and the floor looked like the night sky, with dozens of little lights glowing through the darkness. This was a very magical experience.
Also on the first day, we stopped at the Daintree Wild Zoo, which was a rather unimpressive widlife park, unless you include the saltwater crocodiles they had! We went past a pond overgrown with weeds, and Peter threw a few stones down at the nearest corner to us. Out popped a crocodile head, which made us all jump! Apart from some sexually frustrated kangaroos, that's all we saw at the zoo.The next day Peter picked us up with some other intrepid backpackers, and we kicked back and relaxed south to Cairns. On the way we stopped for some delicious and unusual ice cream, and went on a boat tour on the Daintree River. Sadly we didn't see Fat Albert or any of the other crocodiles that lived in that area, owing to the fact that it was raining, so the river banks they usually rested on were underwater, and it was mating season, so they were in the forest getting down to business.
After a brief tour of Port Douglas and stopping at a fantastic lookout, we were back in Cairns.
So that's it, my part of the journey was over, and the next day I flew back to Adelaide. Thomas headed to Darwin, and would then go to Perth, before coming back to Adelaide for a few days and then flying back to Germany.
After two and a half months, 8750kms, and so many incredible experiences, my summer travels had come to an end.
Friday, April 10, 2009
The Second Saga: Selling the Car
Well as I said, I would be talking about selling the car, and it was such a hassle trying to get rid of it.
When we arrived in Cairns we spent the first couple of days advertising it. Poor Thomas spent the best part of a day on a 'scenic tour' of Cairns. He walked around the whole town centre placing an ad in every window he could. I joined him for the last bit, and by the time we were finished we were completely exhausted, especially due to the awful humidity.
We got a couple of people interested, and they had a look at it, but we had a problem, we were going to the reef for three days. So one person made us an offer, and said he's take the car when we got back, but by the time we were back, he'd found another car! We had only two days to get the car sold in time to change the registration from SA to Queensland. We went to some dealers, but the best offer we got was about $500, and considering we bought the car for $3500, that wasn't a good deal.
We made one last ditched effort to sell it privately, and one guy said he'd buy it for $2000, but when we found out that you had to buy a completely new registration, instead of changing the SA one into Queensland registration. So the guy said he'd buy the car for $2000 minus the cost of the new registration. So we sold the car for $1600.
It was such a shame that we couldn't get any more for the car. We would've tried to get a higher price, but we just had to get rid of it, as we were leaving Cairns a couple of days later. But looking on the bright side, the car (which became known as the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing) was a reliable way of getting everywhere, and it didn't let us down at all. It was cheaper than renting and you had more freedom than if you travelled via public transport. So overall it was worth it. I miss that car! Thomas and I saw the whole East of Australia from Adelaide to Cairns in it, and we travelled 8750kms!
Also, it was good that we got some money for it, as every year Cairns Council pick up heaps of cars that were abandoned by backpackers who couldn't sell them before going home!
The last part of my trip was to Cape Tribulation, which is in the next entry...
When we arrived in Cairns we spent the first couple of days advertising it. Poor Thomas spent the best part of a day on a 'scenic tour' of Cairns. He walked around the whole town centre placing an ad in every window he could. I joined him for the last bit, and by the time we were finished we were completely exhausted, especially due to the awful humidity.
We got a couple of people interested, and they had a look at it, but we had a problem, we were going to the reef for three days. So one person made us an offer, and said he's take the car when we got back, but by the time we were back, he'd found another car! We had only two days to get the car sold in time to change the registration from SA to Queensland. We went to some dealers, but the best offer we got was about $500, and considering we bought the car for $3500, that wasn't a good deal.
We made one last ditched effort to sell it privately, and one guy said he'd buy it for $2000, but when we found out that you had to buy a completely new registration, instead of changing the SA one into Queensland registration. So the guy said he'd buy the car for $2000 minus the cost of the new registration. So we sold the car for $1600.
It was such a shame that we couldn't get any more for the car. We would've tried to get a higher price, but we just had to get rid of it, as we were leaving Cairns a couple of days later. But looking on the bright side, the car (which became known as the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing) was a reliable way of getting everywhere, and it didn't let us down at all. It was cheaper than renting and you had more freedom than if you travelled via public transport. So overall it was worth it. I miss that car! Thomas and I saw the whole East of Australia from Adelaide to Cairns in it, and we travelled 8750kms!
Also, it was good that we got some money for it, as every year Cairns Council pick up heaps of cars that were abandoned by backpackers who couldn't sell them before going home!
The last part of my trip was to Cape Tribulation, which is in the next entry...
The Great Barrier Reef (16 - 18th Feb)
Thomas and I went on the most amazing diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef, with Cairns Dive Centre.
On the first day the small boat, Sunkist, took us out to the reef, which was about 90 minutes out of Cairns. We then boarded the Kangaroo Explorer, our home for the next two nights. The Kangaroo Explorer was a surprise, considering how much money we spent for the trip (which wasn't a lot). Thomas and I had our own en-suite cabin, the food (which didn't cost extra) was fantastic. We stuffed our faces at every meal. On the top deck was 'The Library', where the ship's crazy videographer, Simon, edited all the films he made of everyone on the ship. The ship was a good base to explore the wonders of the ocean below.
And there really were wonders to see down there. Once again, one of Australia's greatest landmarks lived up to its reputation! The water was so warm, it felt like we were in a bath most of the time! The coral itself was beautiful, and so varied, and amongst these were some of the most incredible fish ever. A myriad of shapes, colours and sizes, the fish were captivating. I loved the Giant Clams. These clams were hundreds of years old, and the largest were a couple of metres wide. Their flesh was brightly coloured, owing to the bacteria that live underneath their skin. The parrot fish were also awesome, with their various colours and sizes.
The most memorable moment was when we saw a turtle. On one of our day dives, Simon came down with our group to film us, and he told us to dipserse around him so he could film us. Then I noticed everyone crowding round one point, and there was a turtle. She was loving all the attention as we scratched the back of her shell. It was a great experience.
We found Nemo! Clownfish were everywhere on the reef, and there's an interesating fact about them which Disney and Pixar conveniently left out of Finding Nemo. In their anemone (which the fish live in in exchange for keeping it clean), there's one female with a few males. When the female dies the largest and strongest male changes its sex to become the new female! (imagine explaining that to five year olds!).
We did see sharks, but as they're incredibly fast swimmers, and they're terrified of people and the bubbles from our underwater breathing, those we did see swam away within a few minutes of us spotting them.
While on the boat, Thomas and I did our advanced course. This involved, amongst other things, a deep dive. We went down to about 25m and sat there, while our insructor gave us some simple questions to see if we were narked or not (when you dive deep, the nitrogen in the iar ou breath can make you 'drunk'). He took down an empty plastic bottle with him to show how much pressure there was down at that depth (the bottle was completely squashed flat!) We also had to use a compass to navigate, learn how to identify fish and we did some photography too.
As part of our course, and also just for fun, we also went on night dives. This was an interesting experience, being down there with a torch swimming into the darkness. Despite being told that there would be a lot of interesting stuff down there, but where we dived was just bad. On the first night dive, all we saw were Red Bass, which are about a metre long and are the main predators at night. If you shone your torch on a little fish, chances were that a Red Bass would zoom over and eat it. Thomas had great fun shining his torch on fish and seeing them get eaten, but of course he would enjoy seeing innocent creatures being killed, being German :P.
It was very hectic schedule with 10 dives over the space of three days. By noon each day we'd already been diving twice and had breakfast! It was really exhausting, buch it was such a great experience. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the must see things in Australia!
On the first day the small boat, Sunkist, took us out to the reef, which was about 90 minutes out of Cairns. We then boarded the Kangaroo Explorer, our home for the next two nights. The Kangaroo Explorer was a surprise, considering how much money we spent for the trip (which wasn't a lot). Thomas and I had our own en-suite cabin, the food (which didn't cost extra) was fantastic. We stuffed our faces at every meal. On the top deck was 'The Library', where the ship's crazy videographer, Simon, edited all the films he made of everyone on the ship. The ship was a good base to explore the wonders of the ocean below.
And there really were wonders to see down there. Once again, one of Australia's greatest landmarks lived up to its reputation! The water was so warm, it felt like we were in a bath most of the time! The coral itself was beautiful, and so varied, and amongst these were some of the most incredible fish ever. A myriad of shapes, colours and sizes, the fish were captivating. I loved the Giant Clams. These clams were hundreds of years old, and the largest were a couple of metres wide. Their flesh was brightly coloured, owing to the bacteria that live underneath their skin. The parrot fish were also awesome, with their various colours and sizes.The most memorable moment was when we saw a turtle. On one of our day dives, Simon came down with our group to film us, and he told us to dipserse around him so he could film us. Then I noticed everyone crowding round one point, and there was a turtle. She was loving all the attention as we scratched the back of her shell. It was a great experience.
We found Nemo! Clownfish were everywhere on the reef, and there's an interesating fact about them which Disney and Pixar conveniently left out of Finding Nemo. In their anemone (which the fish live in in exchange for keeping it clean), there's one female with a few males. When the female dies the largest and strongest male changes its sex to become the new female! (imagine explaining that to five year olds!).We did see sharks, but as they're incredibly fast swimmers, and they're terrified of people and the bubbles from our underwater breathing, those we did see swam away within a few minutes of us spotting them.
While on the boat, Thomas and I did our advanced course. This involved, amongst other things, a deep dive. We went down to about 25m and sat there, while our insructor gave us some simple questions to see if we were narked or not (when you dive deep, the nitrogen in the iar ou breath can make you 'drunk'). He took down an empty plastic bottle with him to show how much pressure there was down at that depth (the bottle was completely squashed flat!) We also had to use a compass to navigate, learn how to identify fish and we did some photography too.
As part of our course, and also just for fun, we also went on night dives. This was an interesting experience, being down there with a torch swimming into the darkness. Despite being told that there would be a lot of interesting stuff down there, but where we dived was just bad. On the first night dive, all we saw were Red Bass, which are about a metre long and are the main predators at night. If you shone your torch on a little fish, chances were that a Red Bass would zoom over and eat it. Thomas had great fun shining his torch on fish and seeing them get eaten, but of course he would enjoy seeing innocent creatures being killed, being German :P.It was very hectic schedule with 10 dives over the space of three days. By noon each day we'd already been diving twice and had breakfast! It was really exhausting, buch it was such a great experience. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the must see things in Australia!
1 German, 1 Brit and an American in a Car: Airlie Beach to Cairns
Luckily the weather improved the next day and we were able to leave depressingly wet Airlie Beach. This had been the furthest anyone could go previously, as the roads north were flooded in several places. Travis decided to drive with Thomas and myself on the last leg of the journey. We decided to just head straight to Cairns in case the weather got worse and we were standed.Along the roads on the way we could see plenty of evidence of how bad it had been. The rivers we saw were all extremely full, the fields wre waterlogged and there were warning signs everwhere. Roadworkers were busy clearing up the roads after the water had lowered, and at some places there was still some water on the road.
The journey to Cairns would've been uneventful if it wasn't for all the amazing BIG THINGS we saw on the way! First, we saw the
Big Mango, which was just randomly on the side of the road, as was the case with all the big things we've seen so far! The Big Crab was big, but compared to everything else, it was tiny, but still just as bizarre and random as all the others! The Big Gumboot had a story to it. It was in the town of Tully, which holds the record for the largest amount of rainfall in Australia (and the world? I can't remeber!). The gumboot was 7.9m tall, which was the amount of rain Tully had in one extremely wet year! What would Australia be like without these big things?We also drove through the Girrugin National Park. Up some windy roads, we found the most spectacular views. Mountains and lakes, and endless green could be seen for miles around. The crash barrier at the lookout was covered in graffiti from people who had gone past, and the three of us added our names to it.
Townsville was really really boring,
so we just headed to Cairns, getting there in the early evening. Our hostel, Gilligan's, was more like a hotel. The rooms were all modern and clean, every florr had a kitchen, so you never had to compete with every hostel guest, there was a nightclub, great pool and a bar.Cairns itself isn't that amazing, the real draw (like with Airlie Beach and Hervey Bay) was what was beyond the coast. We spent the first couple of days advertising our car, which we intended to sell there (I'll talk about this later). There was one final big thing. In Cairns, on the Captain Cook Highway, was a giant statue of Captain Cook, several metres high!
While Travis started his open water course, and went to Cape Tribulation, Thomas and I went on a 3 day trip to the Great Barrier Reef!
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands
Airlie Beach itself was crap. The only reason why anyone would be there is that it's the closest place to the Whitsundays. We got down there and had to wait a few hours to before check in opened at our hostel. We stayed at Koalas, which was just as bad a hostel as the Koalas in Noosa. While waiting for the hostel to open we simply sat in the car and slept, as the rain kept lashing down relentlessly. Our room stank, and the place just looked like it was falling apart. It didn't help we had some drunken Irish idiots causing havoc nearby! The next day, Travis (an American friend we met in Noosa) arrived at the hostel.
The three of us were a little worried that our sailing trip to the Whitsundays would be cancelled. The rain just wouldn't stop at all, and a girl in our room had her trip cancelled due to high winds. However, that didn't stop us getting really drunk the night before our trip.
The next day I was really hungover, and the rain was still pouring down, but luckily our trip wasn't cancelled. On the way to our boat, we bumped into Madeleine (again!) who had just got back fro her trip on the Wetsundays (as some people called them), where it rained constantly! Luckily for us the weather improved during our trip, so we actually had some sun breaking through the clouds and hardly any rain at all!
On our ship, the New Horizon, we soon realised we were on a good ship. One of the crew, Blair, came out of the cabin wearing a purple wig and a Victorian woman's swimming costume to explain safety procedures! There were about 30 people on the boat, including the really good four member crew. The chef cooked some really good food!
As we got on the boat at about 3pm, the first day was just sailing out to the islands. As they appeared you could appreciate how beautiful they were. White beaches, rainforests and unspoilt nature was on every island we sailed past. It seemed that many people had hangovers that day, which wasn't helped by the rocking boat. I felt terrible for the whole day!
We started the second day with a snorkel of one of the beaches. The recent bad weather meant that there wasn't a huge amount to see, so we moved to another place before Thomas, myself and two others did a scuba dive. Aided by Travis's underwater camera, we took some really good photos of the coral reef (the Whitsundays are part of the Great Barrier Reef) at our dive spot.
We then moved to the main attraction of the Whitsundays; Whitehaven Beach. It was so good that the weather had improved, otherwise this postcard view of the islands would've been spoiled. We were dropped off on the shore and headeded up to the viewpoint. Onthe way we saw hundreds and hundreds of small crabs running away from us as we approached. If we got near to any of them they would bury themselves in the sand and disappear within a few seconds.
The view from the lookout was stunning, words simply cannot describe how beautiful it was. We spent the time just standing there trying to take it all in. Beautiful is an understatement. It was almost magical.
That evening most of us got drunk on the ship, along with the crew. The were loads of other boats anchored around ours, and at about midnight, two of the crew took the dinghy over to a nearby ship they knew, climbed on board, stole a crate and got back to the New Horizon before the other boat realised what had happened. They had stolen a fancy dress box, and those who were still awake (including myself and Thomas) got dressed in wigs, fairy wings and dresses. It was really good fun!
On the last day we were going to do some more dives, but the visibilty was awful, so we sailed around the islands one more time before heading back to Airlie Beach. It was funny, as we got nearer the clouds became thicker, and it was obvious that while there was no rain on the islands, Airlie Beach was as rainy as it was when we left!
That evening we met up with some of the crew and fellow passengers at a local bar. We saw Madeleine, and we really pissed her off with tales of our relatively un-rainy trip. SHe was going slightly crazy, as she had had constant rain for nearly a week. The next day she flew to Sydney, where it was also raining!
We had a fantastic time sailing around the beautiful Whitsunday Islands, and it certainly was one of the highlights of my time in Australia.
Next stop, Cairns!
The three of us were a little worried that our sailing trip to the Whitsundays would be cancelled. The rain just wouldn't stop at all, and a girl in our room had her trip cancelled due to high winds. However, that didn't stop us getting really drunk the night before our trip.
The next day I was really hungover, and the rain was still pouring down, but luckily our trip wasn't cancelled. On the way to our boat, we bumped into Madeleine (again!) who had just got back fro her trip on the Wetsundays (as some people called them), where it rained constantly! Luckily for us the weather improved during our trip, so we actually had some sun breaking through the clouds and hardly any rain at all!
On our ship, the New Horizon, we soon realised we were on a good ship. One of the crew, Blair, came out of the cabin wearing a purple wig and a Victorian woman's swimming costume to explain safety procedures! There were about 30 people on the boat, including the really good four member crew. The chef cooked some really good food!
As we got on the boat at about 3pm, the first day was just sailing out to the islands. As they appeared you could appreciate how beautiful they were. White beaches, rainforests and unspoilt nature was on every island we sailed past. It seemed that many people had hangovers that day, which wasn't helped by the rocking boat. I felt terrible for the whole day!We started the second day with a snorkel of one of the beaches. The recent bad weather meant that there wasn't a huge amount to see, so we moved to another place before Thomas, myself and two others did a scuba dive. Aided by Travis's underwater camera, we took some really good photos of the coral reef (the Whitsundays are part of the Great Barrier Reef) at our dive spot.
We then moved to the main attraction of the Whitsundays; Whitehaven Beach. It was so good that the weather had improved, otherwise this postcard view of the islands would've been spoiled. We were dropped off on the shore and headeded up to the viewpoint. Onthe way we saw hundreds and hundreds of small crabs running away from us as we approached. If we got near to any of them they would bury themselves in the sand and disappear within a few seconds.The view from the lookout was stunning, words simply cannot describe how beautiful it was. We spent the time just standing there trying to take it all in. Beautiful is an understatement. It was almost magical.
That evening most of us got drunk on the ship, along with the crew. The were loads of other boats anchored around ours, and at about midnight, two of the crew took the dinghy over to a nearby ship they knew, climbed on board, stole a crate and got back to the New Horizon before the other boat realised what had happened. They had stolen a fancy dress box, and those who were still awake (including myself and Thomas) got dressed in wigs, fairy wings and dresses. It was really good fun!On the last day we were going to do some more dives, but the visibilty was awful, so we sailed around the islands one more time before heading back to Airlie Beach. It was funny, as we got nearer the clouds became thicker, and it was obvious that while there was no rain on the islands, Airlie Beach was as rainy as it was when we left!
That evening we met up with some of the crew and fellow passengers at a local bar. We saw Madeleine, and we really pissed her off with tales of our relatively un-rainy trip. SHe was going slightly crazy, as she had had constant rain for nearly a week. The next day she flew to Sydney, where it was also raining!
We had a fantastic time sailing around the beautiful Whitsunday Islands, and it certainly was one of the highlights of my time in Australia.
Next stop, Cairns!
Friday, March 20, 2009
1 German and 1 Brit in a Car 3: Hervey Bay to Airlie Beach (3rd to 8th Feb)
Day 1 Hervey Bay to Gladstone
We left Hervey and continued up towards Gladstone; a handy stopover point on the way to Airlie Beach. On the way we took a slight detour to Bundaberg. Bundaberg is famous (in Australia anyway) for Bundaberg Rum and Bundaberg Ginger Beer. The rum is really crap, but it has an iconic polar bear as their symbol, which is really weird considering polar bears living in the artic. Apparently the designer thought that the rum chilled you down so much that it reminded him of cold things like polar bears!
We didn't bother doing the distillery tour, but went down the road to the ginger beer brewery. This is where the ginger beer Mum always buys is made! The brewery had an interesting interactive tour about the beer making process, and we had tastings of all of their products.
We then drove up to boring and ugly Gladstone. There really was nothing notable about this place, other than it having a great hostel to stay in.
Day 2 Gladstone to Canarvon National Park
We went off the beaten track today and headed inland, and I mean, really inland. We were driving west for over 400kms and ended up at Carnarvon National Park, where they have the most amazing gorge full of wildlife and Aboriginal artwork. By the time we got there it was late afternoon, so we checked out a couple of the things outside of the actual gorge. We loooked at the Baloon (yes that's the correct spelling) Cave, which was covered in ancient Aboriginal paintings. Most were stencils of hands, boomerangs and other items. The artist would mix up the paint, put it in his/her mouth and then spray it over an object placed on the wall, which left a stencil of that object for all to see.
We walked down Mickey's Creek and Wurrambah Gorge. The gorge was an offshot of the larger main one, and the walking track ended only a few minutes down it, but we could easily walk further down. The walls of the gorge gradually got narrower and narrower, and it got more and more difficult to walk through it. We climbed up a rock with the intention of walking further, until we saw some f***ing huge and aggressive spiders swimming in the water towards us, so we hurried back down the rock!
That night we slept in our tent with the top cover off and just the mossie net, and had a great view of the stars above us.
Day 3 A hell of a lot of walking and driving.
We rose before the sun had risen, drove the short drive to the gorge entrance and walked the 6 km return walk to Bolimba Bluff, where we watched the sun rise over the gorge. It was an amazing sight as the gorge was flooded with golden light from the sun.
We walked down to the gorge itself and headed as far as we could go to Big Bend, which was about 10kms, and crossed Canarvon Creek at least 20 times. We then headed back the way we came, going up all the side tracks along the way. The most notable were Cathedral Cave and the Art Gallery, which had even better Aboriginal artwork. Stencils, paintings and engravings covered much of the cliffs in these places.
The Ampitheatre was also really impressive. You walk through a narrow crack in the cliffs which opens up into a large cavern with a small gap where sunlight flooded through. The acoustics were amazing, and our voices rebounded off the rocks like thunder.
Eventually we made it back to our car and headed out of the park. We'd been walking for about 12 hours with only couple of breaks, and we were really exhausted, but it was totally worth it. I would say it's one of the best national parks I've been to in Australia.
We then had the massive drive back to Gladstone. We arrived back at the same hostel at about 11pm! It was a long, exhausting, and fantastic day.
Day 4 The rain comes...
We left Gladstone and continued up to Airlie Beach. Rainy season was now under way, and we were constantly concerned that we would be stranded by the roads flooding. Every few minutes we saw warning signs about the floods. Luckily we were fine for most of the day. We stopped at Rockhampton, which Simon had highly recommended us to visit. At the entrance to the town, we passed over the Tropic of Capricorn, where there was a monument showing the line, where some f****ing huge spiders wer making webs. Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia, so naturally there were giant cows all around! The zoo was awful, but the Botanic Gardens were interesting. The star attraction was a giant fig tree, which took up an aeaof about 2 hectares! Other than that Rockhampton was really boring. I'm not sure why Simon liked it so much.
We tried to find somewhere to stay in Mackay, a nice stopping point on the way to Airlie, but everywhere was full. We decided instead to head straight to the Eungella National Park. On the way the heavens opened, and there was a massive tropical downpour. Add to this that it was foggy, pitch black, and we were going up windy roads, you can tell that we had a really dangerous drive! We got lost several times, but eventually fond a campsite run by the park. However, it was so wet and waterlogged that we just pushed the car seats back and slept in there for the night!
Day 5 Platypus!
The next day the rain hadn't stopped, it had merely stopped pouring down. Eungella NP was supposed to be a place to see platypussies (:P), and Thomas and I were really hoping that just maybe we would see one this time. Our luck paid off, and down by the river, we saw one, and it was scratching (Tasmania people know what I'm talking about!). It was such an amazing sight. They're not as big as you think they should be, and it looked like a small otter, with a duck like bill instead of teeth. We were sooooo happy to have seen one, and it made my day!
We then drove the short distance to Airlie Beach. Read the next entry to see what we did there, and our sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands!
We left Hervey and continued up towards Gladstone; a handy stopover point on the way to Airlie Beach. On the way we took a slight detour to Bundaberg. Bundaberg is famous (in Australia anyway) for Bundaberg Rum and Bundaberg Ginger Beer. The rum is really crap, but it has an iconic polar bear as their symbol, which is really weird considering polar bears living in the artic. Apparently the designer thought that the rum chilled you down so much that it reminded him of cold things like polar bears!
We didn't bother doing the distillery tour, but went down the road to the ginger beer brewery. This is where the ginger beer Mum always buys is made! The brewery had an interesting interactive tour about the beer making process, and we had tastings of all of their products.
We then drove up to boring and ugly Gladstone. There really was nothing notable about this place, other than it having a great hostel to stay in.
Day 2 Gladstone to Canarvon National ParkWe went off the beaten track today and headed inland, and I mean, really inland. We were driving west for over 400kms and ended up at Carnarvon National Park, where they have the most amazing gorge full of wildlife and Aboriginal artwork. By the time we got there it was late afternoon, so we checked out a couple of the things outside of the actual gorge. We loooked at the Baloon (yes that's the correct spelling) Cave, which was covered in ancient Aboriginal paintings. Most were stencils of hands, boomerangs and other items. The artist would mix up the paint, put it in his/her mouth and then spray it over an object placed on the wall, which left a stencil of that object for all to see.
We walked down Mickey's Creek and Wurrambah Gorge. The gorge was an offshot of the larger main one, and the walking track ended only a few minutes down it, but we could easily walk further down. The walls of the gorge gradually got narrower and narrower, and it got more and more difficult to walk through it. We climbed up a rock with the intention of walking further, until we saw some f***ing huge and aggressive spiders swimming in the water towards us, so we hurried back down the rock!
That night we slept in our tent with the top cover off and just the mossie net, and had a great view of the stars above us.
Day 3 A hell of a lot of walking and driving.
We rose before the sun had risen, drove the short drive to the gorge entrance and walked the 6 km return walk to Bolimba Bluff, where we watched the sun rise over the gorge. It was an amazing sight as the gorge was flooded with golden light from the sun.
We walked down to the gorge itself and headed as far as we could go to Big Bend, which was about 10kms, and crossed Canarvon Creek at least 20 times. We then headed back the way we came, going up all the side tracks along the way. The most notable were Cathedral Cave and the Art Gallery, which had even better Aboriginal artwork. Stencils, paintings and engravings covered much of the cliffs in these places.The Ampitheatre was also really impressive. You walk through a narrow crack in the cliffs which opens up into a large cavern with a small gap where sunlight flooded through. The acoustics were amazing, and our voices rebounded off the rocks like thunder.
Eventually we made it back to our car and headed out of the park. We'd been walking for about 12 hours with only couple of breaks, and we were really exhausted, but it was totally worth it. I would say it's one of the best national parks I've been to in Australia.
We then had the massive drive back to Gladstone. We arrived back at the same hostel at about 11pm! It was a long, exhausting, and fantastic day.
Day 4 The rain comes...
We left Gladstone and continued up to Airlie Beach. Rainy season was now under way, and we were constantly concerned that we would be stranded by the roads flooding. Every few minutes we saw warning signs about the floods. Luckily we were fine for most of the day. We stopped at Rockhampton, which Simon had highly recommended us to visit. At the entrance to the town, we passed over the Tropic of Capricorn, where there was a monument showing the line, where some f****ing huge spiders wer making webs. Rockhampton is the beef capital of Australia, so naturally there were giant cows all around! The zoo was awful, but the Botanic Gardens were interesting. The star attraction was a giant fig tree, which took up an aeaof about 2 hectares! Other than that Rockhampton was really boring. I'm not sure why Simon liked it so much.
We tried to find somewhere to stay in Mackay, a nice stopping point on the way to Airlie, but everywhere was full. We decided instead to head straight to the Eungella National Park. On the way the heavens opened, and there was a massive tropical downpour. Add to this that it was foggy, pitch black, and we were going up windy roads, you can tell that we had a really dangerous drive! We got lost several times, but eventually fond a campsite run by the park. However, it was so wet and waterlogged that we just pushed the car seats back and slept in there for the night!
Day 5 Platypus!The next day the rain hadn't stopped, it had merely stopped pouring down. Eungella NP was supposed to be a place to see platypussies (:P), and Thomas and I were really hoping that just maybe we would see one this time. Our luck paid off, and down by the river, we saw one, and it was scratching (Tasmania people know what I'm talking about!). It was such an amazing sight. They're not as big as you think they should be, and it looked like a small otter, with a duck like bill instead of teeth. We were sooooo happy to have seen one, and it made my day!
We then drove the short distance to Airlie Beach. Read the next entry to see what we did there, and our sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
I'm back in Adelaide!
Yesterday evening I arrived back in Adelaide! The trip is over and next week lectures begin again. As always with travelling it's difficult to regularly update this blog, but now I'll be in the same place for a while I can update you all with the last few weeks of travelling.
Look out soon for entries on Fraser Island, Carnarvon Gorge, the Whitsundays, Cairns and Cape Tribulation.
Look out soon for entries on Fraser Island, Carnarvon Gorge, the Whitsundays, Cairns and Cape Tribulation.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Beautiful Fraser
That evening, we had a briefing about our trip the following day to Fraser Island. It was basically the same as any rental company - don't do this, don't do that, or you'll lose your $1000 bond, make sure you do this, etc...oh and don't forget to have a good time! We also met the people we'd be travelling with. We were divided into two groups of nine, one car per group, but we would spend most of the time going around together, and by the end of the trip we all got on well.
Day 1
Rising early, we were shown the basics of our nine seater pink Landcruisers. Seriously, why pink? At least we were distinctive, as pretty much every other car we saw on the island was white, or a dull and uninteresting colour. We actually thought that they might glow in the dark (that's how vivid the colour was), but sadly this wasn't the case.
Thomas took the wheel for the first part as we headed to get groceries for the three days before heading to River Heads, where the ferry would take us over to the island. After about 40 mins we landed on the island, and it was straight on to one of the many windy and bumpy inland tracks.
We stopped briefly at Central Station. This place clearly used to have some kind of importance, based on the name, but now it was just a collection of tourist info boards, communal facilities and tons of trees. We then went towards the eastern beaches, the main roadway on the island; used by wildlife, pedestrians, cars and planes to get from A to B. We stopped at Eurong, a small (but large for Fraser) resort town, which had one of the only bits of tarmac road on the island. Here we ate some ridiculously good pies before going on to the beach.
It was a new experience for many of us driving on the beach. Most of the time the sand was smooth enough to reach the speed limit of 80 km/h, but every now and then there'd be a suddne drop, or the saltwater would come too close to the car ($1000!). It was really good fun actually. We drove to Lake Wabby, one of Fraser's many freshwater lakes. The water was just the rigth temperature for swimming, and a massive sand dune steeply went up on one side, which many of us ran down jumping into the water.
I then drove us to our campsite for the night. On the way we stopped at the impressive Maheno shipwreck. All that was left of this old passenger cruiser was its rusty shell, which was constantly being attacked by the waves. The other pink car found us and we spent the evening srinking lots and talking lots.
Day 2
In order to make it to our first stop of the day before the tides blocked the road, we left the campsite by about 6.30am. We continued driving up to Indian head. This was the point where we couldn't drive any more, as the roads were really bad, and we'd lose $1000! We walked to the top of the headland, where there were spectacular views of Fraser's pristine beaches and sand dunes. The water was so inviting, even though it had dangerous currents, tiger sharks and deadly jellyfish!After ecountering a very photogenic monitor, we walked north of Indian head up to Champagne Pools. This large rock pool was sheltered from the currents by a large wall of rock. Waves came crahing over, and the bubbly foam caused by the waves made it feel like you were swimming in champagne, hence the name Champagne Pools. Some of us rather stupidly sat on the rocks and felt the full force of the waves hitting us! We then saw one of Fraser's landmarks; the dingo. Fraser has one of the largest and purest of dingoes in Australia. We saw two park rangrs on the path above the pools shout "Dingo!", and then the dog came into view, climbing over the rocks, apparently not concerned about the hundreds of people taking pictures of him. He didn't pose a threat, but we were ready to defend ourselves "aggressively" (stupid safety video) if he attacked.
We then drove back the way we came, as the tides had lowered sufficiently enough for us to drive to our next stop. The Pinnacles were some really tall, ancient sand dunes that had weathered to look like mountains. When we pulled up, we were expecting some kind of walk, but it was just a small path before we reached a dead end. It was a bit of a disappointment. We then stopped at Eli Creek, one of the largest creeks that flows into the sea on the island. We could walk up a small part, and at the point where we could no longer go further, we saw a garden snake, luckily curled up asleep, and a rather large spider, but he luckily wasn't interested in us!
At our next campsite that evening we found out that the others had camped a little further down with some other 4x4s they had met on the way down. In pitch black darkness we somehow managed to walk all the way there (about 20 mins) carrying our esky (cool box) whihc was full of beer! We didn't stay long, as it started to rain, and it got every cold.
Day 3
On our way to Lake McKenzie, we stopped at a rubbish dump. Owing to the dingoes, there wre only a select few places were you could dispose of rubbish, as even indirectly feeding dingoes incurred harsh penalties. At this dump, there were a few dingoes roaming round, and they took an interest in our rubbish, which I had the job of binning. The first bin I came to was full, as was the second and third. I was trying to find an empty one with the constant thought that dingoes were creeping up behind me, and then they started howling. When I got into the back of our car, a dingo was right by it looking in before I shut the door! A close encounter with an amazing animal.
Most of the day was spent at Lake McKenzie, which is often dubbed as the premier attractinon Fraser Island. I could certainly see why. Pristine white sand, light blue water and trees surrounding the lake. If only the sun came out, then we would've truly seen the lake's beauty. As we were heere all day, some of us decided to head to Eurong and get some more pie. Even though it wasn;t very far away, Fraser's roads meant it took over an hour to get there and back. But that's the great thing about 4x4 driving; it's so much fun!In the early afternoon we went back to the barge terminal, had a group picture with everyone and then went back over to the mainland. That night we all met up for food and drinks at the hostel.
Fraser Island definitely lived up to is reputation as one of THE things to see in Australia. It was so different, and so beautiful as well.
Friday, January 30, 2009
1 German and 1 Brit in a Car 2: Brisbane to Hervey Bay
We headed up the coast in the direction of Fraser Island from Brisbane.
Along the way we briefly stopped at the Glasshouse Mountains, just off of Steve Irwin Way (yes he has a road named after him). Owing to the immense heat and relentless mossies we simply walked to the lookout, where we saw the two highest mountains and then headed on. The mountains looked stunning, as they simply jut out of the earth upwards, and some have nearly vertical sides. However, they were not nearly as impressive as the Blue Mountains, but still worth the visit.
We then headed to Noosa where we stayed for 2 nights at the Koala Beach Backpackers. The hostel was crap compared to the excellent one we stayed at in Brisbane, and the only selling point was the really good bar it had, where we saw a really god live band on the first night. We went walkabout (Mrs Boss) and tried to find the Noosa NP, but for some reason we couldn't find it, but we did find a row of beautiful houses which backed on to the harbour. It was very tranquil and relaxing there.
Yesterday (28th) we caught the free coach to Australia Zoo; home of the late Steve Irwin. And crikey! There were a lot of BEAUTIFUL animals to see there. Have a look at this! Elephants, tigers, kangaroos etc, and of course, CROCODILES!. WOOHOO! You beauties! (:P) There was a cracking show at the Crocoseum, where pretty much every animal at the zoo made an appearance, the most impressive being the massive crocodile jumping up for food. it was a really well put together place, and every sign was written Steve Irwin style. We also saw interesting information sessions about the zoo's elephants and tigers. Overall it was a good day out, and we could kip n the coach back to Noosa. That evening we met up with Madeleine (spelling) who we met in Brisbane and spent another night in the hostel's bar.
Today (30th) we drove the short drive to Hervey Bay, which is one of the main paces to go to Fraser from. This evening we'll have a meeting about our trip. We'll be going on the world's largest sand island (another Aussie superlative) for 3 days and 2 nights. As all the roads are sand, we'll be on a self drive 4x4 tour with some other people from our hostel. The cars look good, apart from being a violent shade of pink! Things to see include some great beaches, wildlife, inland lakes and ore. The fact that the local Aborigines call the island Paradise suggests that it'll be a great few days.
I'll write more when we get back!
Along the way we briefly stopped at the Glasshouse Mountains, just off of Steve Irwin Way (yes he has a road named after him). Owing to the immense heat and relentless mossies we simply walked to the lookout, where we saw the two highest mountains and then headed on. The mountains looked stunning, as they simply jut out of the earth upwards, and some have nearly vertical sides. However, they were not nearly as impressive as the Blue Mountains, but still worth the visit.
We then headed to Noosa where we stayed for 2 nights at the Koala Beach Backpackers. The hostel was crap compared to the excellent one we stayed at in Brisbane, and the only selling point was the really good bar it had, where we saw a really god live band on the first night. We went walkabout (Mrs Boss) and tried to find the Noosa NP, but for some reason we couldn't find it, but we did find a row of beautiful houses which backed on to the harbour. It was very tranquil and relaxing there.
Yesterday (28th) we caught the free coach to Australia Zoo; home of the late Steve Irwin. And crikey! There were a lot of BEAUTIFUL animals to see there. Have a look at this! Elephants, tigers, kangaroos etc, and of course, CROCODILES!. WOOHOO! You beauties! (:P) There was a cracking show at the Crocoseum, where pretty much every animal at the zoo made an appearance, the most impressive being the massive crocodile jumping up for food. it was a really well put together place, and every sign was written Steve Irwin style. We also saw interesting information sessions about the zoo's elephants and tigers. Overall it was a good day out, and we could kip n the coach back to Noosa. That evening we met up with Madeleine (spelling) who we met in Brisbane and spent another night in the hostel's bar.Today (30th) we drove the short drive to Hervey Bay, which is one of the main paces to go to Fraser from. This evening we'll have a meeting about our trip. We'll be going on the world's largest sand island (another Aussie superlative) for 3 days and 2 nights. As all the roads are sand, we'll be on a self drive 4x4 tour with some other people from our hostel. The cars look good, apart from being a violent shade of pink! Things to see include some great beaches, wildlife, inland lakes and ore. The fact that the local Aborigines call the island Paradise suggests that it'll be a great few days.
I'll write more when we get back!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
More Brisbane
Here's a summary of the rest of our time spent in Brisbane.Queensland Culture
Being the capital of Queensland, Brisbane has lots to offer in terms of culture. We visited the Cultural Centre, where all the state museums, galleries and libraries are. The Queensland Musuem had all the usual stuff on Queensland history, etc. The most interesting exhibit was on animals, where there was an emormous height chart where you could compare your size to the size of a vast array of animals.
The most fun was had at the library's 'Game On' exhibition, which charts the history of video games, from the earliest games in the 1960s to the present. Basically Thomas and I played video games for three and a half hours! They had all the classics from Pong to Sonic and Doom to Space Invaders. The exhibition is also running in the UK, so all you video game freaks keep and eye out for this one! We also visited the state galleries, where there was some weird modern art.
Chinatown, The Valley and more churches
Along with some people we met at our hostel, Thomas and I visited Chinatown, in The Valley area of the city, where there was supposed to be a really good market. Turns out that we walked all the way there in the Brisbane heat to find a few stalls selling stuff no one in their right minds would ever want to buy, but we meade up for this by ating some good Asian food.
Looking at churches again, we went to St Johns Cathedral. It's an interesting church in that it was only completed before Christmas last year, so it had a very new feel about it.
We went out for the night to The Valley, which supposedly is the place to go out in Brisbane. However, hundreds of people in tight spaces in the humid Brisbane climate meant none of us found it very comfortable. If I'd have wanted to get soaked, I woud've gone swimming! Also, the bouncers here are weird. They seem to make up their dress codes as they go along, so much that one guy wasn't allowed into a club with his shirt on, so he turned it inside-out, and was then allowed in. But of course no dress code applied to the girls, who could get away with wearing basically nothing.
South Bank and Mount Cootha
Thomas and I explored South Bank, which is next to the Cultural Centre. It's Brisbane's modern and trendy zone, with cafes and such. But also they have some beautiful garden areas, relaxing walks by the river, and the Streets Beach, which is an outdoor free swimming pool and beach area right by the river. Once again I was impressed by what Brisbane had to offer. If I came to live in Australia, it would probably be either in Adelaide or in Brisbane.
Later that day we went to see Valkyrie, a film about one of the assassination attempts on Hitler. It was a very well done film and it has a superb cast, including Tom Cruise, Ken Branagh, Bill Nighy to name a few. Definitely worth seeing.
At about midnight Thomas myself and a two of the guys in our room (Livvy and Catherine) went drove up to Mount Cootha, where we had great views of the city in darkness, that is until the fog blocked the view. If we'd have got there 10 minutes later we would've been able to see nothing.
Australia DayYesterday (26th) was Australia Day, the national day for Australians to get out their Aussie flags and party. It's funny how Aussies celebrate the arrival of 700 British convicts to Sydney in 1788, which heralded the destruction of the Aborigines' way of life, as their national day, but like every event in a nation's history, it has been turned into a monumental celebration far removed from what actually happened. Nevertheless we celebrated the day as well by wearing Aussie flags and taking part in the festivities. There was plenty to see at the free events at South Bank. There were
performances by local singers, actors and other groups, and the day culminated in a great fireworks display by the river. The best thing we saw were the numerous street performers walking around, such as these comic policeman acrobats, and human flies hovering around bins harrassing everyone who walked past. It was good fun overall. We spent most of the day sitting on the grass with Livvy, Catherine and Madeleine (our new friend from Canada).Car and Photo Troubles
Poor Thomas has spent most of the time inbetween the above recovering the thousands of phots he accidentally deleted from his computer. Luckily he's been able to salvage most of the pictures he had, and any he's lost he'll be able to get from other people. He's been very lucky considering he thought he'd permanently lost everything. It's made me make sure I backup my photos more regularly!
Today our car was finally fixed by the local mechanic, and luckily there was nothing else wrong with it beyond what the mechanic had noted the other day. Now we have our roadworthy certificate and we'll be able to sell the car in Cairns!
Tomorrow (27th) we'll leave Brisbane and continue north. The next major things on our 'To See List' include Australia Zoo, Fraser and the Whitsunday Islands, and of course, the Great Barrier Reef. Keep checking the blog for future updates and tell everyone to look at it!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Brisbane so far...
After checking into our hostel we had a look around the city. Being comparable to Adelaide sizewise, it doesn't feel as huge and as daunting as Sydney, and it has a more relaxed atmosphere. They even have their own ball statues like they have in Adelaide! We went to see Seven Pounds, which is a really good film, but don't expect to leave the cinema feeling happy...
Yesterday (20th) we explored more of the city, looking at the Botanical Gardens and the Story Bridge; a smaller, yet still impressive version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We also passed by the Queensland Parliament. As the sun set, the sky was became filled with some f'ing huge bats. They were the size of parrots or cockatoos, and would scare plenty of people at home I'm sure, but the locals continued doignwhat they were doing, as they were used to the large and scary looking wildlife!
Car Troubles Again!
We intend to sell our car in Cairns, but the Queensland Government requires every car to have a roadworthy certificate (similar to an MOT), but in SA this isn't necessary. We decided to see a mechanic to obtain the certificate and to get the car fully serviced. Thomas came back today (21st) and said "we're screwed". The horn, right front window and headlights need fixing. This wouldn't be very expensive to fix, but the front suspension is also f**ked. In total it'll probably cost $600 to be fixed, but in order to sell the car, it has to be done, even though it would be nice to avoid the cost. The mechanic was really busy, and the earliest he can fix our car is next Tuesday! So we'll be in Brissie longer than expected, but we'll still have a great time!
This didn't improve poor Thomas's mood, as the day before he somehow managed to lose most of his pictures on his laptop!
Keep checking the blog for future updates now I'm finally up to date!
Yesterday (20th) we explored more of the city, looking at the Botanical Gardens and the Story Bridge; a smaller, yet still impressive version of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. We also passed by the Queensland Parliament. As the sun set, the sky was became filled with some f'ing huge bats. They were the size of parrots or cockatoos, and would scare plenty of people at home I'm sure, but the locals continued doignwhat they were doing, as they were used to the large and scary looking wildlife!
Car Troubles Again!
We intend to sell our car in Cairns, but the Queensland Government requires every car to have a roadworthy certificate (similar to an MOT), but in SA this isn't necessary. We decided to see a mechanic to obtain the certificate and to get the car fully serviced. Thomas came back today (21st) and said "we're screwed". The horn, right front window and headlights need fixing. This wouldn't be very expensive to fix, but the front suspension is also f**ked. In total it'll probably cost $600 to be fixed, but in order to sell the car, it has to be done, even though it would be nice to avoid the cost. The mechanic was really busy, and the earliest he can fix our car is next Tuesday! So we'll be in Brissie longer than expected, but we'll still have a great time!
This didn't improve poor Thomas's mood, as the day before he somehow managed to lose most of his pictures on his laptop!
Keep checking the blog for future updates now I'm finally up to date!
1 German and 1 Brit in a Car 1: Sydney to Brisbane (12th to 19th Jan)
Day 1: Sydney to Port Macquarie
By the time we'd left Sydney, we thought that we had ample time to get to Port Macquarie, however we didn't count how much time it would take to sort out two issues: paying for the use of Sydney's toll roads and changing mobile phone providers.
Many of Sydney's roads, including the bridge, are not free to use; you have to pay a toll to use them. However, it was not a simple case of paying a person at the toll gate, oh no. Apparently, 90% of NSW residents prefer to pay their tolls electronically. Most drivers have a device in their vehicle which is scanned whenever they drive on a toll road, and their account is automatically charged. This is OK for residents, but for tourists? We used the toll roads a few times, and we had to ring a number within 48 hours to pay and avoid them sending a bil to a registered address. We tried calling them on Saturday and Sunday, but the call centre was shut. Was this part of the 48 hours we had to pay in? Oh yes it was! Poor Thomas was on hold for at least 20 mins trying to get this bloody tolls paid for! I can't see how 90% of NSW people prefer this system. Surely it's easier just to pay the toll there and then in cash?
Hiiiii, you've reached Virgin Mobile! To top up your credit only to lose it in 2 days because of our extortionate rates, press 1. Well sorry Virgin Man, we couldn't handle your extortionate rates any longer, so we switched to Vodafone. Somehow their automated voice, Lara, doesn't have the same subtle tones as the Virgin Man, but at least the system is better and the rates are cheaper! It took us ages to register our new sims and transfer our numbers over!
So, after about 2 hours of sitting in a Hungry Jack's carpark talking to robotic voices, we could finally keep going. We stopped at Port Stephens just north of Newcastle, and walked up to the headland, which was part of the Tomaree National Park. The walk to the top was pretty exhausting, especially in the soaring heat, but it was worth it for the fantastic views we had: hills, beaches and blue sea as far as the eye could see. For some reason my Bible (Lonely Planet) didn't mention this place. Maybe it was because of the giant spiders which we there (they were the size of my palm!).
We then continued north, looking for the Lakes Way; a scenic drive through parts of the Myall Lakes NP. We turned into the park far too early, and could only drive a certain way until we came to a river where you needed to cross in a ferry, which had stopped running for the day. This meant we had a massive detour back to the Pacific Highway. We did however see the most breathtaking sunset over the lake.
We were now hard pushed to make it to our hostel before reception closed at 11pm. We certainly had underestimated how long it would it take to get to Port M. The roadworks we had for the last part of the trek did not help. We did make it to the Ozzie Pozzie Backpackers at about 11, so there was no problem there. Tired and hungry from the journey (we really shouldn't have travelled that far that day) we attempted to find somewhere serving food that was still open. Luckily a bakery opened its doors for us when we went past! The hostel f'ed up our beds, so we ended up sharing a double bed, which meant I didn't have a very comfortable night!
Day 2: Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour
Once again administrative stuff set us back this day. It took ages to get our laundry done, and we spent a long time trying to get a hostel for Byron Bay for the day after, but we had no luck, so we decided to go to Nimbin instead.
Port Macquarie had a good vibe about it. It was another stereotypical Aussie seaside town. Everyone was wearing flip-flops and most people had a surfboard with them. The breakwall was very interesting, as each rock had been painted. There was a mix of road trippers who'd left their marks, poems, artwork, birthday messages and the like. The beaches were also pristine. We drove down to the lighthouse were we had yet another incredible beach view.
Along the way to Coffs, we went on a slight detour to have a drink at the interestingly named Pub With No Beer. The story goes that at one point this rural pub screwed up an order, which meant it didn't have any beer for a short while. Local country singer Slim Dusty wrote a song about it called 'The Pub With No Beer', and the pub became so famous that it changed its name to the song's name. They did sell beer, and even had their own brewery on site! We also stopped for food at Fredo's Pies, where they had 50 different types of pie, and two random lifesize Marilyn Monroe statues.
We arrived at Coffs mid evening, and at midnight I turned 21! We celebrated with a cake (well a custard tart with a candle in it) and beer! Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes!
Day 3 and 4: Coffs Harbour, Ballina and Nimbin
In the morning we explored Coffs Harbour. Like Port M, Newcastle, Apollo Bay, etc it was another Aussie surfer town, however for some reason it wasn't as good as Port M. It was lacking something; despite being a bigger town it didn't seem to be as lively. We walked to Muttonbird Island; a nesting ground for these rare birds, but like the platypussies in Tassie, we were there at the wrong time of year/day to see any!
On the way out of Coffs, we went to the Big Banana. This giant banana is a random tourist attraction. The shop accompanying sold a horde of banana related items, such as banana shaped water bottles, banana earrings, and anything else you could imagine.
It wasn't long before we came across another random giant thing. This time it was a giant prawn, situated on the main road into Ballina. It made complete sense for it to be there: the shop "underneath the prawn" (:P) sold nothing prawn related, and as far as we could tell Ballina wasn't noted for its prawns. At least Coffs is a major area for banana growing! Australia seems to have an obsession with random giant things (giant lobster, banana, prawn, rocking horse, etc). It's almost as if the Aussies feel that their country's outstanding natural beauty is not attractive enough to make people visit, so they have to erect giant structures everywhere.
We then went to Nimbin. In the middle of f'ing nowhere, Nimbin is a small town with a very unique culture and attitude. The town looks like it's in a time warp; stuck in the 60s and 70s. Every inch of wall has been treated like an artist's canvas, therefore weird and wonderful art covers every shop face. The locals are in their own world most of the time and glady invite you to join it! It is a mecca for hippies and open minded people yearning to expand their minds and look at things from a different perspective.
The next day was spent in the town and at our great hostel in the locals' world. Situated about a 30 min walk from the main street, up a dirt track and across a river, Nimbin Rox YHA felt like an oasis. You could truly relax in the shade surrounded by palm trees and the beautiful countryside. It was a really good hostel, and deserved it's title as NSW's best YHA!
By the time we'd left Sydney, we thought that we had ample time to get to Port Macquarie, however we didn't count how much time it would take to sort out two issues: paying for the use of Sydney's toll roads and changing mobile phone providers.
Many of Sydney's roads, including the bridge, are not free to use; you have to pay a toll to use them. However, it was not a simple case of paying a person at the toll gate, oh no. Apparently, 90% of NSW residents prefer to pay their tolls electronically. Most drivers have a device in their vehicle which is scanned whenever they drive on a toll road, and their account is automatically charged. This is OK for residents, but for tourists? We used the toll roads a few times, and we had to ring a number within 48 hours to pay and avoid them sending a bil to a registered address. We tried calling them on Saturday and Sunday, but the call centre was shut. Was this part of the 48 hours we had to pay in? Oh yes it was! Poor Thomas was on hold for at least 20 mins trying to get this bloody tolls paid for! I can't see how 90% of NSW people prefer this system. Surely it's easier just to pay the toll there and then in cash?
Hiiiii, you've reached Virgin Mobile! To top up your credit only to lose it in 2 days because of our extortionate rates, press 1. Well sorry Virgin Man, we couldn't handle your extortionate rates any longer, so we switched to Vodafone. Somehow their automated voice, Lara, doesn't have the same subtle tones as the Virgin Man, but at least the system is better and the rates are cheaper! It took us ages to register our new sims and transfer our numbers over!
So, after about 2 hours of sitting in a Hungry Jack's carpark talking to robotic voices, we could finally keep going. We stopped at Port Stephens just north of Newcastle, and walked up to the headland, which was part of the Tomaree National Park. The walk to the top was pretty exhausting, especially in the soaring heat, but it was worth it for the fantastic views we had: hills, beaches and blue sea as far as the eye could see. For some reason my Bible (Lonely Planet) didn't mention this place. Maybe it was because of the giant spiders which we there (they were the size of my palm!).
We then continued north, looking for the Lakes Way; a scenic drive through parts of the Myall Lakes NP. We turned into the park far too early, and could only drive a certain way until we came to a river where you needed to cross in a ferry, which had stopped running for the day. This meant we had a massive detour back to the Pacific Highway. We did however see the most breathtaking sunset over the lake.We were now hard pushed to make it to our hostel before reception closed at 11pm. We certainly had underestimated how long it would it take to get to Port M. The roadworks we had for the last part of the trek did not help. We did make it to the Ozzie Pozzie Backpackers at about 11, so there was no problem there. Tired and hungry from the journey (we really shouldn't have travelled that far that day) we attempted to find somewhere serving food that was still open. Luckily a bakery opened its doors for us when we went past! The hostel f'ed up our beds, so we ended up sharing a double bed, which meant I didn't have a very comfortable night!
Day 2: Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour
Once again administrative stuff set us back this day. It took ages to get our laundry done, and we spent a long time trying to get a hostel for Byron Bay for the day after, but we had no luck, so we decided to go to Nimbin instead.
Port Macquarie had a good vibe about it. It was another stereotypical Aussie seaside town. Everyone was wearing flip-flops and most people had a surfboard with them. The breakwall was very interesting, as each rock had been painted. There was a mix of road trippers who'd left their marks, poems, artwork, birthday messages and the like. The beaches were also pristine. We drove down to the lighthouse were we had yet another incredible beach view.
Along the way to Coffs, we went on a slight detour to have a drink at the interestingly named Pub With No Beer. The story goes that at one point this rural pub screwed up an order, which meant it didn't have any beer for a short while. Local country singer Slim Dusty wrote a song about it called 'The Pub With No Beer', and the pub became so famous that it changed its name to the song's name. They did sell beer, and even had their own brewery on site! We also stopped for food at Fredo's Pies, where they had 50 different types of pie, and two random lifesize Marilyn Monroe statues.
We arrived at Coffs mid evening, and at midnight I turned 21! We celebrated with a cake (well a custard tart with a candle in it) and beer! Thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes!Day 3 and 4: Coffs Harbour, Ballina and Nimbin
In the morning we explored Coffs Harbour. Like Port M, Newcastle, Apollo Bay, etc it was another Aussie surfer town, however for some reason it wasn't as good as Port M. It was lacking something; despite being a bigger town it didn't seem to be as lively. We walked to Muttonbird Island; a nesting ground for these rare birds, but like the platypussies in Tassie, we were there at the wrong time of year/day to see any!
On the way out of Coffs, we went to the Big Banana. This giant banana is a random tourist attraction. The shop accompanying sold a horde of banana related items, such as banana shaped water bottles, banana earrings, and anything else you could imagine.
It wasn't long before we came across another random giant thing. This time it was a giant prawn, situated on the main road into Ballina. It made complete sense for it to be there: the shop "underneath the prawn" (:P) sold nothing prawn related, and as far as we could tell Ballina wasn't noted for its prawns. At least Coffs is a major area for banana growing! Australia seems to have an obsession with random giant things (giant lobster, banana, prawn, rocking horse, etc). It's almost as if the Aussies feel that their country's outstanding natural beauty is not attractive enough to make people visit, so they have to erect giant structures everywhere.
We then went to Nimbin. In the middle of f'ing nowhere, Nimbin is a small town with a very unique culture and attitude. The town looks like it's in a time warp; stuck in the 60s and 70s. Every inch of wall has been treated like an artist's canvas, therefore weird and wonderful art covers every shop face. The locals are in their own world most of the time and glady invite you to join it! It is a mecca for hippies and open minded people yearning to expand their minds and look at things from a different perspective.The next day was spent in the town and at our great hostel in the locals' world. Situated about a 30 min walk from the main street, up a dirt track and across a river, Nimbin Rox YHA felt like an oasis. You could truly relax in the shade surrounded by palm trees and the beautiful countryside. It was a really good hostel, and deserved it's title as NSW's best YHA!
Day 5, 6 and 7: Byron Bay
We finally managed to get a hostel for Byron Bay and headed back to modern civilisation on 16th. Byron really lived up to all the hype. It was a surfer's/backpacker's hotspot. It really was a town where everything was done in the sea. Everyone was walking around in beach gear, and there were dozens of surf style shops and cafes. Byron had the classic laid back, friendly Aussie atmosphere we'd grown to love.
Our hostel, Belongil Beachouse, was situated across the road from one of the great beaches. Yet again we were surrounded by lucious palm trees, and the place had a great feel to it. After checking in we hit the beach and chilled.
The next day was the first rainy day we'd had since...well, since before Melbourne at least! So we did little and just relaxed at the hostel. The following day we visited Cape Byron: the most easterly point on the Australian mainland. Past the lighthouse, we sat on the rocky outcrop for what seemed like ages and just watched the sea hitting the shore.
The following we day we left Byron and went north towards Brisbane. It was good to have a few days off from the sometimes hectic travelling in Nimbin and Byron.
Day 8: Byron Bay to Brisbane
It wasn't a long trip to Brisbane. On the way we of course went across the NSW-Queensland border, and it was the most unimpressive border we'd seen so far in Australia. We stopped along the Gold Coast, which is worshipped (like everywhere else north of Sydney) for its great beaches and surf.
Surfers Paradise, the main town on the Gold Coast, felt out of place in Australia. I felt like I was in somewhere like Miami. Ugly high-rise hotel blocks ran along the coastline and backed on to the beach, which was heavily crowded with tanners, swimmers, surfers and bossy lifeguards. I don't think it lived up to its name, as there were so many people surfing, you were more likely to crash into another surfer than actually do some decent surfing. It was a little dissappointing, and our friend Ben told us it was like this. He only spent 40 mins there, but we were determined to beat this, and actually ended up staying for about 2 hours!
At a cafe in Surfers, we had to ask the waiter for the time. Queensland, like Britain with the Euro, likes to be different from its fellow Aussie states. For example, they don't follow daylight savings time, so it's an hour behind NSW which is in the same timezone as Queensland. Also, if travelling via train, at the border the train needs to be altered to fit on the tracks, which are a different width in Queensland than in all the other states!
We then travelled the short distance to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Our hostel is friendly and comfy, with free parking, which was a welcome change to the terribly expensive parking fees in Sydney (we once paid $51 for one night in a car park!), and there were no sodding toll roads!
We finally managed to get a hostel for Byron Bay and headed back to modern civilisation on 16th. Byron really lived up to all the hype. It was a surfer's/backpacker's hotspot. It really was a town where everything was done in the sea. Everyone was walking around in beach gear, and there were dozens of surf style shops and cafes. Byron had the classic laid back, friendly Aussie atmosphere we'd grown to love.
Our hostel, Belongil Beachouse, was situated across the road from one of the great beaches. Yet again we were surrounded by lucious palm trees, and the place had a great feel to it. After checking in we hit the beach and chilled.
The next day was the first rainy day we'd had since...well, since before Melbourne at least! So we did little and just relaxed at the hostel. The following day we visited Cape Byron: the most easterly point on the Australian mainland. Past the lighthouse, we sat on the rocky outcrop for what seemed like ages and just watched the sea hitting the shore.
The following we day we left Byron and went north towards Brisbane. It was good to have a few days off from the sometimes hectic travelling in Nimbin and Byron.
Day 8: Byron Bay to Brisbane
It wasn't a long trip to Brisbane. On the way we of course went across the NSW-Queensland border, and it was the most unimpressive border we'd seen so far in Australia. We stopped along the Gold Coast, which is worshipped (like everywhere else north of Sydney) for its great beaches and surf.
Surfers Paradise, the main town on the Gold Coast, felt out of place in Australia. I felt like I was in somewhere like Miami. Ugly high-rise hotel blocks ran along the coastline and backed on to the beach, which was heavily crowded with tanners, swimmers, surfers and bossy lifeguards. I don't think it lived up to its name, as there were so many people surfing, you were more likely to crash into another surfer than actually do some decent surfing. It was a little dissappointing, and our friend Ben told us it was like this. He only spent 40 mins there, but we were determined to beat this, and actually ended up staying for about 2 hours!
At a cafe in Surfers, we had to ask the waiter for the time. Queensland, like Britain with the Euro, likes to be different from its fellow Aussie states. For example, they don't follow daylight savings time, so it's an hour behind NSW which is in the same timezone as Queensland. Also, if travelling via train, at the border the train needs to be altered to fit on the tracks, which are a different width in Queensland than in all the other states!
We then travelled the short distance to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland. Our hostel is friendly and comfy, with free parking, which was a welcome change to the terribly expensive parking fees in Sydney (we once paid $51 for one night in a car park!), and there were no sodding toll roads!
2 Germans, 1 Brit and 1 Wombat in a Car 3: Sydney to Newcastle and back
We left Sydney on 9th Jan and headed to Newcastle. We made a slight detour and headed to some of the many beaches North of Sydney, such as Whale Beach and Palm Beach. This was a taster for the majority of our journey north: beaches, beaches and more beaches!We then went to the Kurungai-Chase National Park, just north of Sydney. Here the Kurungai Aborigines had left many cave paintings and engravings before being wiped out by smallpox a year or so after Europeans arrived. The park was probably the least impressive one I'd been to so far. The Red Hands Cave, where there were many hand paintings, was not as impressive as it was made out to be. Most of the hand paintings had faded, and you could only just make them out. We spent a while searching for the so called Echidna engraving site, but for one reason or another we just couldn't find it, however we did find another engraving site. Here there were several drawings cut into the rock, the most interesting one being a group of wallabees arching around two people.
Leaving the park we headed up to Newcastle and checked into the Newcastle YHA. Newcastle felt to me like a typical British seaside town, and I quite liked the relaxed atmosphere of the place. That evening we went out to a pub were there was some very good live music.
The next day we went on a tour of the Hunter Valley; one of Australia's premier wine regions. Our tour guide Graham with HADES (Hunter And District ExcursionS) took us through the valley explaining, with surprising detail, the history of the region. Our group was really small (there were only 5 of us), which meant the tour was hassle free, and we could explore the wineries at our own pace. In total we visited 5wineries, 2 cheese shops, an olive/jam/chutney place, a chocolatier and a liquor shop. In most we tried 5 or 6 wines, but in one we tried everything on their list! Luckily the tour included a massive lunch, otherwise we would've been wasted by the early afternoon. The liquor store had some unusual drinks for us to try, the best one being a chilli schnapps, which was so damn good I had to buy a bottle! It was a good day out and totally worth it.Back in Newcastle after checking into our new hostel (we sort of forgot that we'd be spending the whole day drinking, and it wouldn't have been a good idea to drive anywhere, so we thought it would be best to stay another night, but the YHA was full), we went to the beach and went into town in the evening.
The next day we headed back to Sydney for our last night there. We made a quick trip to Bondi Beach. For all the hype of Bondi (internationally known and recognised as a great surf spot), it was a little disappointing. To me it just looked like a typical crowded beach, and there was little else to it than that.
The following day started on a sad note, as Ines was flying back to Germany. We dropped her at the airport and then Thomas and myself left Sydney and headed north on the next leg of our journey.
See my Facebook photo album which goes with this entry:
Adelaide to Cape Trib 5: Mountains, Wine, Beaches and Cities
6 More Days in Sydney (and Blue Mountains)
By 3rd Jan I had sufficiently recovered from my NYE ordeal to actually explore this great city. Even though Sydney is an incredible place, it seemed too big. Melbourne was big, but had the relaxed feel of a smaller city, like Adelaide. Here's a summary of what we got up to.
The Quest for Shoes
Ines still desperately needed to get new shoes, and we spent most of the 3rd looking around for a suitable replacement pair. It was a struggle, but just when we thought all the shops were closed, we found a shop still open, where Ines got some new shoes! The day wasn't just spent on this quest. We also had a look at Darling Harbour; a recently redeveloped part of the city, with pedestrian boulevards, restaurants and cafes. We also pretty much covered the entire city centre. It was the same as any big city really, and there's little more to say about that...
The Beach and Kings Cross
The following day we went to the beach, but not Bondi. As it was a Sunday Simon recommended we avoid it, as Bondi would've been full to the brim with people Costa del Sol style. Instead we headed to Watson's Bay, near Gaps Bluff: the southern part of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. According to Simon, the place was a suicide spot!The beach itself was small and less crowded than it could've been. In the evening we met up with Steve, Claire and others from Adelaide and headed to Kings Cross; the principal going out area of Sydney. Sadly Ines wasn't well, so she and Thomas headed back to the house early on.
The House, The Garden and The Bridge
Ines wasn't any better the next morning, so I headed into the city on my own and met up with Claire at the opera house, where we went on a tour of the complex. It was interesting to hear about the building's history and secrets. I didn't realise that it is one of the most recognised buildings in the world, with around 2/3 of all people being able to identify it! Sadly we weren't allowed to take any pics of the theatres, but I can tell you they were magnificent!
After the tour I headed to the Botanic Gardens. It seemed to be a great place to sit down and read a book or relax with friends, and there were plenty of people doing just that. It was really interesting walking through the greenery with the skyscrapers of the CBD (and yes geographers they actually refer to city centres as the CBD) towering above you. The best part was at Mrs Macquarie's point, where there were the best views of the harbour. Above all I liked the attitude of the garden managers. This was clearly shown on one of the signs at the entrance, which instructs vistors to "Please walk on the grass, hug the trees, talk to the animals" etc, which was a welcome change to the usual "don't do this" information you're normally bombarded with.
I then walked to The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney, and therefore the oldest area of European settlement in Australia. It had a very "olde worlde" feel about it, as the council had tried to make it attractive to tourists whilst playing down the more gruesome aspects of the area's history (drunken lawlessness). From here I headed up on to the magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge. Everyone says you should climb the bridge, but to be honest there's not really much more you could see from the top than you could by walking along the walkway. The views were yet again spectacular, with the opera house sitting on the water and the skyscrapers adding the perfect background to a perfect photograph.
The Blue Mountains
On the 7th we headed west to the Blue Mountains. After dropping Simon off at the airport (he was heading to Uluru!) we drove out to the national park. The mountains really were blue, well green, but owing to a mix of eucalyptus and water vapours, the mountains were tinged with a blueish haze. The Wentworth Falls would have been spectacular, had the drought not reduced it to a stream. It was just too damn hot to do any hikes despite us wanting to.
We went to Echo Point, a fantastic lookout, where the main attraction was The Three Sisters, which are 3 columns of rock standing next to the cliff face. It was an impressive sight. We could walk down to the first of the three along the Giant's Stairway; an appropriate name considering how steep the stairway was! As we went down there the weather changed and a storm was on the way. This meant that it was incredibly windy, and we were nearly blown off our feet!
We moved on this day out of the house and into a hostel in the heart of the city. It was a good place to stay, apart from the fact that I was the only one in the dorm who wasn't German! I was used to this, however the girls refused to even try to speak English. This was OK for Thomas and Ines, but I couldn't participate in any of the conversations! Those girls even talked about me in German, as if I wasn't there. They were really, really rude!
Museums, Diners and Churches
After two nights at Base we moved to a better backpackers in Chinatown for a night before heading up to Newcastle (yet another town name stolen from the UK!).
So we spent the last day before Newcastle at the Australian Museum. Like the War Memorial there was a huge amount to look at and not enough time to do it in. We focused on an exhibition of photographs by the winners and runners up of the Australian Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award, an exhibit on the Aborigines and one on Australian wildlife. Yet again our minds were filled with too much info and by the time we left our heads hurt.
We had lunch at Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a streetside American style diner. It was a bit of a tourist attraction, as they had pics on the walls of famous people who'd stopped by for a bite to eat, like Elton John and Kevin Cosner, amongst others.
We also had a look at one of the city's cathedrals. Sadly the crypt, which every tourist book raved about, was closed, but we could still see a lot of the building. However, I somehow preferred the cathedral we visited in Melbourne. It had a much warmer and inviting atmosphere than this one. In the evening we went to the IMAX Theatre to see U2 in excellent picture and sound quality, and in 3D too.
The next day we travelled to Newcastle!
See my Facebook photo albums which go with this entry:
Adelaide to Cape Trib 4: New Year in Sydney
Adelaide to Cape Trib 5: Mountains, Wine, Beaches and Cities.
The Quest for Shoes
Ines still desperately needed to get new shoes, and we spent most of the 3rd looking around for a suitable replacement pair. It was a struggle, but just when we thought all the shops were closed, we found a shop still open, where Ines got some new shoes! The day wasn't just spent on this quest. We also had a look at Darling Harbour; a recently redeveloped part of the city, with pedestrian boulevards, restaurants and cafes. We also pretty much covered the entire city centre. It was the same as any big city really, and there's little more to say about that...
The Beach and Kings Cross
The following day we went to the beach, but not Bondi. As it was a Sunday Simon recommended we avoid it, as Bondi would've been full to the brim with people Costa del Sol style. Instead we headed to Watson's Bay, near Gaps Bluff: the southern part of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. According to Simon, the place was a suicide spot!The beach itself was small and less crowded than it could've been. In the evening we met up with Steve, Claire and others from Adelaide and headed to Kings Cross; the principal going out area of Sydney. Sadly Ines wasn't well, so she and Thomas headed back to the house early on.
The House, The Garden and The BridgeInes wasn't any better the next morning, so I headed into the city on my own and met up with Claire at the opera house, where we went on a tour of the complex. It was interesting to hear about the building's history and secrets. I didn't realise that it is one of the most recognised buildings in the world, with around 2/3 of all people being able to identify it! Sadly we weren't allowed to take any pics of the theatres, but I can tell you they were magnificent!
After the tour I headed to the Botanic Gardens. It seemed to be a great place to sit down and read a book or relax with friends, and there were plenty of people doing just that. It was really interesting walking through the greenery with the skyscrapers of the CBD (and yes geographers they actually refer to city centres as the CBD) towering above you. The best part was at Mrs Macquarie's point, where there were the best views of the harbour. Above all I liked the attitude of the garden managers. This was clearly shown on one of the signs at the entrance, which instructs vistors to "Please walk on the grass, hug the trees, talk to the animals" etc, which was a welcome change to the usual "don't do this" information you're normally bombarded with.
I then walked to The Rocks, the oldest part of Sydney, and therefore the oldest area of European settlement in Australia. It had a very "olde worlde" feel about it, as the council had tried to make it attractive to tourists whilst playing down the more gruesome aspects of the area's history (drunken lawlessness). From here I headed up on to the magnificent Sydney Harbour Bridge. Everyone says you should climb the bridge, but to be honest there's not really much more you could see from the top than you could by walking along the walkway. The views were yet again spectacular, with the opera house sitting on the water and the skyscrapers adding the perfect background to a perfect photograph.
The Blue Mountains
On the 7th we headed west to the Blue Mountains. After dropping Simon off at the airport (he was heading to Uluru!) we drove out to the national park. The mountains really were blue, well green, but owing to a mix of eucalyptus and water vapours, the mountains were tinged with a blueish haze. The Wentworth Falls would have been spectacular, had the drought not reduced it to a stream. It was just too damn hot to do any hikes despite us wanting to.
We went to Echo Point, a fantastic lookout, where the main attraction was The Three Sisters, which are 3 columns of rock standing next to the cliff face. It was an impressive sight. We could walk down to the first of the three along the Giant's Stairway; an appropriate name considering how steep the stairway was! As we went down there the weather changed and a storm was on the way. This meant that it was incredibly windy, and we were nearly blown off our feet!We moved on this day out of the house and into a hostel in the heart of the city. It was a good place to stay, apart from the fact that I was the only one in the dorm who wasn't German! I was used to this, however the girls refused to even try to speak English. This was OK for Thomas and Ines, but I couldn't participate in any of the conversations! Those girls even talked about me in German, as if I wasn't there. They were really, really rude!
Museums, Diners and ChurchesAfter two nights at Base we moved to a better backpackers in Chinatown for a night before heading up to Newcastle (yet another town name stolen from the UK!).
So we spent the last day before Newcastle at the Australian Museum. Like the War Memorial there was a huge amount to look at and not enough time to do it in. We focused on an exhibition of photographs by the winners and runners up of the Australian Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award, an exhibit on the Aborigines and one on Australian wildlife. Yet again our minds were filled with too much info and by the time we left our heads hurt.
We had lunch at Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a streetside American style diner. It was a bit of a tourist attraction, as they had pics on the walls of famous people who'd stopped by for a bite to eat, like Elton John and Kevin Cosner, amongst others.
We also had a look at one of the city's cathedrals. Sadly the crypt, which every tourist book raved about, was closed, but we could still see a lot of the building. However, I somehow preferred the cathedral we visited in Melbourne. It had a much warmer and inviting atmosphere than this one. In the evening we went to the IMAX Theatre to see U2 in excellent picture and sound quality, and in 3D too.
The next day we travelled to Newcastle!
See my Facebook photo albums which go with this entry:
Adelaide to Cape Trib 4: New Year in Sydney
Adelaide to Cape Trib 5: Mountains, Wine, Beaches and Cities.
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