my australia

It's my last hours in Sydney, in Australia, in fact even on this hemisphere. And it's good. I am not happy to go, nor am I sad to leave. Or is it both? The last days I spent in Sydney went by fast. I had expected to be bored as my living had changed from my time in Baltic Street, as some of my friends are gone already. But I met others, strolled through the city and said goodbye. It was fun staying at the Abbey again, very interesting to see those who are just about to start their journeys. I didn't feel like a wise men sitting there listening to their plans and expectations, but I could certainly say that I had an idea what would wait for them out there.
Right now I am sitting at a desk at NICTA again, will catch a cab to the airport after lunch. Sounds unspectecular, but for me it was stressing enough as I had to pack up all my belongings to bring them to an airport ready final state (oh how do I hate packing). Past midnight (local time) I'll be in Bangkok, hopefully set up to spend some quality time there, spacing out before good old Germany will get me back. What shall I say? Catch you later, I guess!

So many things happened. But the truly very shitty internet outposts I saw during the last weeks were everything but inviting me to catch up with you here. So what happend after Noosa ... oh boy, here we go!
As I mentioned we wanted to see Fraser Island, we only had one day so we booked an organised tour and therefore got picked up at 6.00am right in front of our hostel in Noosa (the car stayed there for the day). We had to take a ferry and disembarked with out 4wd bus directly at the beach. The day itself was very packed although we felt that we missed out on a lot of things because of the high tide. It was raining a couple of times, too. But at the most important spot, Lake McKenzie we had pure sunshine and the 7th best swim in the world - so we were told.
That night we headed to Brisbane, where me met Greg in the city and followed him to his house. It was so nice staying in such a friendly environment, where there was just no need to keep all valuables with us because of random people sleeping in the same dorms! We spontaneously were invited (or not?) to a party of a fried of Greg (or one of his friends) and had a big night with at least some true Aussies. On Saturday morning I dropped Farhad off at the airport and than started giving Greg some exercise, for more than four hours we walked through Bisbane and even disovered the true size of it's Botanic Gardens. Later we went out for dinner with the Trustpastlovers and followed them to their favourite habitat, a bar in the valley. We stayed to long in regard to our flight the next morning!
Dropping off the car at the airport and flying to Cairns just went fine. And so, only a few hours later, still Sunday morning, we were sitting in one of Cairns many tourists' offices (the only official one) and wanted to check out accomodation. We ended up booking a five dive dive course. We were so tired that it just happened.
It turned out to be a very good decision, the offer was nice. We had two days of training in the pool and then three days on a diveboat out at the Great Barrier Reef. Luckily we decided to do the German course wish helped us into a group of four people with one instructor. It was nothing but fun!
When it came to the boat trip the next cyclone, Larry, was just in front of the coast and so it wasn't sure that we would go out. But as it was predicted he would hit the mainland 500km up north we boarded and had a very rough ride out, leading to half the passengers standing on the deck puking!
Learning under these conditions gave us a lot of self esteems and so it was strange but very very nice to go down as a buddy pair with nobody else but my sister! Our ten open water dives (including a very cool night dive) just went by and sooner than expected we were back in Cairns. The rocking in our head stayed for another two days.
We had four complete days left in Cairns and wanted nothing but to chill out. The wet season wasn't really over anyway, so we had to cope with quite a few heavy showers that demotivated us to do any more daytrips. The weather got way better on the last to days so that we could move our relaxed bodies into the sun, to the water. We spent a fair bit of time with our very cool mates from the boat, starting off with a long party on Saturday. Hope I'll see some of them again!
Then it came to another early checkout and within the blink of an eye we were back an our way to Sydney, partly even back on the way to Germany! Yesterday I hugged my sister goodbye and sent her off, she's back in Frankfurt already!
So I am back in Sydney now, for a couple of days. Actually I am sleeping not only in the very same hostel but also in the very same bed as during the first weeks here. Isn't that crazy?

... as we left the Gold Coast yesterday. The trip is really going great for us. After Byron we headed to Nimbin, the biggest, most clichee hippie town ever, and later to Surfer's and had a really great day leading to a really long night for Farhad and me. We did the Big Night Out, a pub crawl organised by four hostels. What could I say?
After keeping the car parked for one complete day, this morning we drove up to Noosa, leaving Brisbane aside. Here we checked another great beach and coastal town. Okay, they are somewhat similar, but still nice. Tomorrow we gonna see Fraser Island before driving into Brisbane, where I gonna catch up with Greg. He will show Kristina and me around on Saturday. A private guide - great, isn't it? Farhad is gonna fly back to Sydney on Saturday morning and we'll fly up to Cairns on Sunday.
One more thing: The left driving thing is working out and I noticed how much I missed steering! Could be linked to all these awesome roads we have to take!

So we're on the road! It wasn't too easy getting started, and very spontaniously we picked up a third ally for the whole thing as well! It's my (former German flat-) mate Farhad. We picked him up from Cherrybrook and then drove up to Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay (at the Gold Coast) where we are at the moment. It's sooo sunny and the biggest problem I have at the moment is finding new shorts in one of the many beachfront shops. Still we won't stay much longer, it's very crowded and kinda stereotype. It's only one week, so I can stand that, I guess. And I wanna see Surfer's paradise anyway. But first we gonna go to Nimbin, then Surfer's, then Brisbane, Fraser, Noosa ... sorry, the beach is shouting for us! Catch u later!

The end of an era? Certainly not, but to me as important! This is the last blog entry from Sydney, at least for now. It's been a great time the last weeks. First I worked hard to get things done and am quite happy with what happened. And then, about a week ago, I picked up my lil sister. It was a weird feeling having somebody from that (part of the) world here with me, but it's good though. We've been up for so many things with so many cool people I met here during the last months. Had a nice disco-bbq-party organised by French blokes (!!!), went bowling, had Chinese food in Chinatown - which may sound obvious, but it's not -, saw the body worlds exhibition, Katoomba and the sisters, did heaps of sightseeing (made it to the aquarium, finally) with a lot of trips I had done before. Somehow it was a good-bye tour in that sense, finishing off with the usual riot with my oz-housemates. KA will have to come up with some hot parties to make me feel comfortable again in a few weeks.

I worked on a plan for the next time as well, but it's not that definite yet, rather general. It involves us renting a car this weekend and starting to drive up the coast to Fraser or at least Brisbane with all the mandatory stops. Beaches, the sea, hopefully some parties and relaxation, that's what we'll be looking for. I will also try to catch up with some blokes I met in Sydney earlier, would be great if that really would work out.

"...
And so I face the final curtain.
...
The record shows,
I took the blows -
And did it my way!"

Around the world in 180 days, that's what Maike and René are doing. They started back in October and are on the road, so far through India and Thailand (...) and finally Australia. I had thought about catching up with them a couple of weeks ago, but lost track - till I found out they already made it to Aussie ground last week. Placing some lead in their blog, contact via email and - voilà - they ended up in my kitchen preparing Käsepätzle. Okay, that was more due to the fact that we had pretty shitty weather during that time here. It was both, nice and strange, having people from back home in my livingroom, I didn't have real visitiors from Germany before and I reckon there aren't too many to come up either. As it kept on raining we had another dinner the next day, followed by some beer on King Street. On Friday, they went on to Auckland. Enviable vacation.

We first thought we would have to wait a day for the bus we had a reserved place on to show up. But there was a second service, more a guy trying to rip us off. But hey, we had no real choice. I talked to some daytrippers, but none would give us a ride so we actually paid quite a bit of money for a trip to Hobart. But this also meant we had one more day there, an opportunity, I guess.
We soon found a very convenient hostel and the first thing I did was walking to the nearby Laundromat, to get some of our things washed. Damn, we must really have been smelling like hell, at least I noticed my clothes were. Then I had a really nice and long lasting shower. Funny, but the hostel felt really comfortable and clean (although it still was a hostel). We went out that night, but only for dinner. Marc wanted to have a pizza, I voted to share one. We found a very nice place and got some awesome looking and tasting pizzas, but both had to give up after the first half. Did that ever happen to me before? I don't know. But I still feel that my stomach shrinked during that time. Interesting to see, what you really need or at least how much you can make from how less for a while.
After more than a week without the internet or phones I turned my mobile on again. I didn't miss any of that, although I of course need it in my daily life. Living without all this geeky stuff still works, guess it's good to realize that from time to time.
The night was very nice, so warm an comfi, soft and dry. Still we both woke up early and started into the day. We walked across Hobart (which doesn't have such a nice tourist office) following a walking guide map. But feeling the urge to relax, we spend quite a while in the harbour, where the Syndey to Hobart Yacht Race ended few days earlier. Sitting there watching the crowed, drinking a coke ... what could you want more? Hobart is a small, very remote place and so I managed to breath some of its flair during the time we had, also exploring the city and discover its specialties.
And one more time we had to check out before the day had seen light, catching our flight back to Sydney. Luckily our stuff hadn't been found or at least not taken, Hobart Iternaional Airport looked the same and different as well. I caught myself smiling about my expectations and what I had seen. We boarded the plane and were back in Sydney. The last thing we had to do was walk from Newtown Station back to my house, of course carrying the packs on our backs. Walking home.

Having one complete day in Melbourne to run our errands necessary for the bushwalk first sounded a lot but turned out to be just enough. We had called Tasair and asked them to fly us in earlier, so we wouldn't need to go into Hobart from the airport anymore. Cool.
The next morning we had to get up really early again, to catch the shuttle bus to the airport. All went good and few hours later we arrived at Hobart Iternational Airport. Sounds good, like more than it is. In fact, they don't even have lockers where we could have lodged the things we did not want to carry around for a week. So Marc came up with the idea of burying our own personal treasure. Quite a few things ended up in one of our (later very imporant) waste bags that got hidden next to the airport's parking lot.
We then walked up to the Tasair building, to get some bad news: the weather was too bad (although we could see blue sky), especially stormy, to fly us out. Well, but the nice guy told us, he thought it might be possbile to get us there that afternoon, he would call around noon, we could co to Hobart in the meantime. But we decided that wasn't worthwhile or at least wanted to wait first. Somehow we were sure not to get there. Well, we walked a bit and climed up a hill for the control tower, where we spent the next hours chilling/sleeping. Finally we got told that they would "risk", and so we had to do some paperwork, organize bottles for the fuel we were to get and soon we were ready for take off. With a bunch of four people plus the pilot we were tinned into a small cessna, warned to experience a bumpy ride. And a bumpy ride it was.

Unfortunately we had to discover it was impossible to rent a car between Xmas and New Year's. There were just too many tourists flooding the city, and they obviously had planned ahead - in contrast to us. So after visiting quite a few car rental companies we gave up looking through the ads of organized tours again. Two days was what we had in mind for a visit of the Great Ocean Road, it was supposed to be a road trip in our own car. Now we had to face the facts, there were only one and three day tours offered. We had no choice and took the one day opportunity, still there were heaps of offers but I think we were quite lucky with our choice! The next morning we found ourselves in a bus with 14 others, mostly Japanese, on the way west. First funny discovery: the music for the trip came out of an iPod with playlist fitting the scenery or the upcoming sights. Very cool.
Our first stop was at an Aborigial Culture Center, where we were shown some more or less interesting facts and things (including some emus). Didn't really know that there were still Abos living in tribes, practicing there religion, for most of em you see in Sydney are old drunken bums sitting on the street in Redfern! In the end we listened to a pretty cool didgeridoo performance and than after walking through their enormous garden for a while had to be back on the bus.
We went on to Bell's Beach, a famous surf beach where the world's oldest surf competition is still on every year. Quite nice there, unfortnuately we didn't really have enough time to go have a swim. On our way there we stopped to see some Koalas. Yeah, these admirable creatures get to sleep most of the day, eating the rest of the time. Very impressive seeing them sitting just there, not really caring about us.
For lunch we stopped at Apollo Beach, where Marc and I relaxed and had a swim in the very cold water. How refreshing, some nice views and sand in my pants included. No waves. During the afternoon we had another stop for a short rain forest tour, the cold type. Only there and (tata) on Tasmania. What a preview. While driving next to the cliffs listening to some Moby tracks arranged to underline the scenic athmosphere it first came to my mind that I might be off not too bad having somebody else to drive the car while I was spacing out. They even had some games, mostly these metal puzzles, to shorten the ride.
In the late afternoon we finally came to the Apostels, which are just too touristic in my opinion. I had a hard time taking some pictures (notice the one that broke down lately) not showing all the busloads of families, daytrippers (yeah, like us) and wannabe backpackers hanging out there. First I thought the planned 45mins our stay was meant to last would be very short, but I had enough time to explore what could be explored (well, I might have wanted to climb down to the beach, but that is a different thing) and I was just about to get really annoyed about the masses when I realized I had to get back to the car. Marc even did a helicopter flight (what a tourist ). Not far from there we visited the shipwreck coast and Lock Ard Gorge, where we managed to climb into the very interesting cave, full of stalactites and -mites. Brilliant. Our last real stop was the London Bridge, which is not only cool to see but features a funny story.
It tooks us some hours to get back to Melbourne, including a dinner stop, and summing the day up I think we were really busy. But on the other hand a selfmade two day tour in a rented car would probably not have provided a lot more time to see stuff, for it would have come with the hassle of driving and finding. I guess it turned out to be okay and as I (spoken today) know that we could make good use of the extra day in Melbourne, I am satisfied with that.

Did I wish you Merry Xmas? Well, a Happy New Year then, just for the record. A lot of things happened since that last time I blogged during the night while waiting for my wallet to come back! Let me give you a short insight of what happened.
On the morning of December 26th Marc and I flew to Melbourne to hang out some days and see the city before starting our adventure trip on Tassie. I gotta say that I liked the city immediately and I also understood what people had in mind telling me that it has a European style. We got ourselves a backpacker hostel right next to the Federation Square, a good point to start our exploration. Since we did not really study the Lonely Planet before the trip we managed to make heavy use of the tourists office which (and here I am serious) is the best one I have ever been to. We got heaps of tips, maps, walking guides, car rental companies and a truck load of ideas how to see the Great Ocean Road - a lot of filtering had to be done. We decided to give the walking tours a go for shopping definately wasn't our main interest and chilling here and there while seeing the great sport locations, the parcs, some historical sights sounded just good. What I enjoyed most was the river running through the city's heart, with lots of cool things to see, especially at night, sculptures, fancy fountains, the exhibitions center, artists, funny people, ... and whatnot.
Strolling through the city we found ourselves in the Melbourne Central shopping mall, hey, this complex is soo huge, going over four blocks (including several bridges over streets), somehow hidden, really well equipped and architecturally absolutely astonishing from the inside! As we discovered it held a cinema (of course) we decided to watch King Kong that night. However, no time for a movie review.