Australia 2001 / 2002
Monday, January 28, 2002
Uh well, the long weekend is over and I am back at work. As 26th January is Australia Day, we had Monday off.
On Thursday, I saw System Of A Down at Horden Pavillion in the Fox Studios (It's now off my todo list, too.) SOAD was supported by the local band COG and by Amen. COG was really awesome. Beside playing great music, it was just great to see that the band so much enjoyed playing. Well, Amen on the other hand was just plain boring standard crap and definitely not my taste. SOAD played a good set and I was quite impressed.
On Friday, we went to the Quay Cinema directly at Sydney Harbour to see Amelie. Finally. So far everybody told me me that this movie is just great and wasn't really able to say why. Well, it is witty and lovely, I'd say. It's a wonderful story and the images used express a strong feeling. I loved it and can only recommend it. :-)
Then came the Big Day - to be more precise the Big Day Out. It's Australia's biggest music festival and takes place at the Olympic Park. Plenty of stages with all sorts of bands and a nice location. I saw bands like COG (hehehe), Silverchair, System Of A Down, Prodigy, Garbage, NOFX, New Order and many more. There were also some electronic areas with great acts - but I definitely can't remember their names. You can check out www.bigdayout.com for more information.
The rest of the weekend was more quiet and relaxing. :-)
posted at 21:07
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
I just uploaded the new photos. Especially the Koala shots are really nice. :-)
posted at 18:09
Sunday, January 20, 2002
Had a nice relaxing weekend and I'm down to one or two points on my list of things to do in Sydney. :-)
On Friday, we went to the Moonlight Cinema and saw Crounching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Moonlight is an Open Air Cinema that takes place in Centennial Park at a really nice location.
The movie is filmed beautifully, but it was a bit difficult to follow the entire movie with Chinese voices and English subtitles. We lacked a bit of preparations, eg. blankets, pillows and stuff.
On Saturday, we left rather later and drove to Waratah Park way in the north of Sydney. It takes ages to get there from Parramatta and after we entered the park it was a bit disappointing. They are still very proud of Skippy the bush kangaroo that was filmed there in the 60s...
Well, it was cool nonetheless as I was actually able to touch kanagroos, emus and koalas. Yeah, they are really as fluffy as everybody says! :-) I never touched something (living) that is this fluffy.
Uh, and one of the kangaroos had a little joey in its pouch. :)
The emus are rather ugly, but it's impressive how tall they are.
On Sunday, we went to the Museum of Contemporay Art at Circular Quay. They have different exhibitions rightnow. The best one was Neo Tokyo, I'd say. This one featured some rather strange objects, but also some interactive art which I always like.
Photos of these will follow shortly. Stay tuned. ;-)
posted at 16:47
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
The new photos are finally online. Make sure that you check out the stitched photos - some are really great!
posted at 00:30
Saturday, January 12, 2002
Uh well, this is going to be a real short version of what I did during the last month. I wrote about nine DIN A4 pages in my tour diary, but how should I summarize this now?
The first step was a Qantas flight from Sydney to Alice Springs. This is a distance of about 3000 km.
Then we did a two day tour from Alice to Uluru (Ayers Rock). Another 1500 km.
The third step was a three day bus tour through the outback from Alice to Cairns. Add 2500 km.
Finally, Greyhound buses took us from Cairns back to Sydney. We had stops in Airlie Beach (for Whitsunday sailing), Hervey Bay (for Fraser Island), Noosa, Brisbane and Coffs Harbour. The total distance of this was more than 2700 km.
If you add this all up it's about 9700 km.
I traveled through three different time-zones and was sweating in the Outback at 50 degree Celsius, tropical rainforest near Cairns, diving at the Great Barrier Reef, three-day sailing the Whitsunday Islands, a day at Fraser Island (the world's biggest sand-island), saw Lord of the Rings in Brisbane, learned to surf and did skydiving above Coff's Harbour. I also saw: emus, dingos, lizards, goannas, sharks, termites, kakadus and, of course, kangaroos.
After this real quick summary, here are some more detailed impressions:
Alice Springs, Kings Canyon, Uluru, Kata Tjuta
The flight from Sydney to Alice Springs is just easy. In the beginning it is really nice to nothing but red earth below us, but after some hours you just get used to it. ;-) However, at this point it is still strange to imagine that people actually travel on the ground in this region. You can look to the horizon and still don't see any sign that this vast land ends somewhere?
Alice Springs is a nice and quiet city. The next morning we are already off to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for a two-day tour. We first hike through King's Canyon and even take a swim there! The rock formations of King's Canyon look like made of Lego bricks and from the top mountains the visibility is about 100 to 200 km's!
As it actually rained a lot in this area throughout the last weeks, the scenery is rather green with grasses and bushes all over the place and water in the waterholes and creeks. This gives it all a strange feeling because we are sweating at 45 degrees.
Again you can feel the vast dimensions of this land: there is no cloud on the fantastic blue sky and only in some parts you can see mountain ranges at the horizon. Also notable, we have a stop at Curtin Farm - a farm that is about the size of Northern Ireland!
We arrive at our night camp just to see a beautiful sunset over Uluru. It's so warm that we can easily sleep under the most impressive sky I have ever seen! I really don't know the words to describe how clear that night was. You weren't able to find Southern Cross or other stars in the sky, because every single star was so bright and intense that you couldn't figure out which stars to look at.
In the morning we get up to see sunrise at Uluru in its famous red light. Afterwards, some people decide to climb the rock - which is actually the world's biggest known monolith e.g. one single piece of crystal - while we walk about 8 km around it.
Our next stop are the Olgas also known as Kata Tjuta. We learn more about the indigenous people and later end our tour - after 1500 km - back in Alice Springs.
Outback
On Thursday the 20th December we start our three-day bus tour from Alice to Cairns. We travel with about ten people via Plenty Highway which is actually an unpaved road. We have a couple of stops in places where you just wonder how people live there. Farms that are hours away from their nearest neighbours. Some things we saw during our tour: a giant (5 m high) termite mould, all sorts of Australian animals, sunrises and sunsets in the outback, a camel train, the smallest pub of Australia (less than a square meter in size) and the birthplace of Quantas and Waltzing Matilda. The first night we stay at a farm and eat our dinner from the campfire while we stay at the "Grand" Hotel for the second night. The maximum temperature was above 50 degrees Celsius and yes, this is rather hot. Although, I have to say that you can still stand it as the humidity is much lower.
Cairns, Cape Tribulation, Great Barrier Reef
While the humidity in the outback is fine, in Cairns it's about 30 to 40 degrees Celsius, but so humid that your T-shirt is more or less instantly wet from sweat. You jump out of the shower in the morning, dry yourself and after about ten minutes you are wet from sweat again!
While Cairns is a nice city, it has a problem: no direct beach access. The beaches at the esplanade are not for swimming and so you have to take a bus to go to Trinity Beach or other places. And Trinity Beach is really a beautiful place and just 15 min by bus north of Cairns. During this time of the year you are only allowed to swim within certain areas that are protected by nets as the deadly Box Jelly Fish and stingers are in the water. By the way, the water temperature was 31 degrees Celsius! So it wasn't exactly refreshing...
On Christmas Eve we take a tour to Cape Tribulation with just four people. Cape Trib is about an hour north of Cairns and as fantastic beaches and tropical rainforest. We learn a bit about the rainforest and its critters e.g. we see a 42000-headed colony of bats and butterflies that are 30 cm wide!
We take a small boat and cruise through some river to see crocodiles. It was too hot so we just saw two of them lying around. If you take a look at the photos that I took, you probably won't see them at all. We also see some piranhas stirring up the water behind us.
I also have my little blow-up Christmas tree with me to take some definitely-non-white-Christmas photos. ;-)
On Christmas Day we take the Passion Of Paradise to go diving and snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. This was just awesome. We sit on the boat and prepare to jump in the water as somebody asks how deep the water is here. 'About 25 m' is the answer - and we can actually see the bottom! Kick arse! This water is so crystal clear and the corals are really colourful, too. And the fish... and argh, everything! I saw "shells" that are about a square meter in size and more than a hundred years old. Some of the most colourful fish and two sharks! Just about 1.5 m long, but still beautiful to look at.
After our two dives, we set off to some pure sand island with no tree, no bush, nothing on it and go snorkeling around there. I never thought that snorkeling could be so cool.
This was definitely a different kind of Christmas, but I liked it nonetheless.
Airlie Beach, Whitsunday Islands
Well, Airlie Beach is a tourist city where everybody has a boat as the Whitsunday Islands are nearby. So we go sailing for three days with Dream Catcher. The Whitsundays are a group of more than 70 islands that are mostly undeveloped i.e. they have dense forests and beautiful beaches, but no beach clubs. They are still part of the Great Barrier Reef, so you have corals and fish all over the place.
It's the first time that I actually sleep on a boat and sail for such a long time. I really enjoyed the time and liked so help with the sails and winches. We only lacked some shade throughout the days.
The really most beautiful beach I have ever seen - and probably will - is Whitehaven Beach / Hill Inlet. The water was crystal clear, nice and warm. The sand was 97% silicium - pure white sand! And we could spot some stingrays and small sharks while in the water. Amazing! Take a look at the photos, I really can't describe it.
Hervey Bay, New Year's, Fraser Island
We take a night bus and arrive in Hervey Bay in the early morning. In my eyes Hervey Bay is just a small tourist city. There is not much to do, no direct beach access and not even nice shops. There's just Fraser Island off the shore - so all the tourists start their tours from Hervey Bay.
On New Year's Eve, everybody goes the one pub in town. It's a mixture of young and old people with a bad live band. ;-) The only cool thing about this New Year's is the fact that I can wear shorts and T-shirt... And it's also strange that there are only public fireworks in Australia. Private persons aren't allowed to have their own fireworks. Well, the one in Hervey Bay wasn't exactly impressive... but still nice.
The next day - first January twenty-oh-two - we go to Fraser Island. It's the world's biggest sand-island and has the purest dingo colony. It also has the only rainforest that grows on sand. There is a popular shipwreck on the beach and some colourful sand-formations. Really nice, but perhaps I expected more, so I was a bit disappointed. You hear so much about Fraser and after I've seen Cape Tribulation north of Cairns, it is just difficult to beat that, I guess.
Noosa, Brisbane
Noosa is about two hours north of Brisbane and an Australian tourist city. We spend only one night there and go out for dinner. It's a nice place, but we lack the time to actually see it.
Brisbane is really nice, too. However, I have to admit that I missed some major attractions. There's a botanical garden, the old Expo area, some museums and a really nice city center, but beside that?
Coff's Harbour
This is our last stop before we are back in Sydney. It's still eight hours north of Sydney and our backpacker's is directly at the beach. As we are way below the Great Barrier Reef already, there are some fantastic waves again.
On the second day, I go skydiving. This just kicks arse! It is a really great feeling. Actually, I am surprised how different all the various phases are. The take-off with the little Cessna is way quicker and smoother than I expected. Then we fly above the beaches and islands below us until we reach 10.000 feet / about 3.000 m. The sight is just beautiful and we are lucky that nearly all clouds vanished. When we reach the correct altitude and open the door... woah! It's cold, windy and very loud. I have to put my right foot out, then grab a part of the wings with my arms, and then the left foot... After some time, I am told to let loose everything and a second later we jump... In the first seconds you just can't do anything else but screaming! Freefall for nearly 40 seconds! Your checks are pushed back and you still scream... Then the parachute opens and Mark gives me the handles to steer. It's amazing to hang in the air and slowly reach the ground. The sight is really fantastic... after about ten minutes it's over and you can't stop smiling for a long time. :-)
The other day we take one our surf lesson. I heard that you shouldn't expect too much from just one hour, not everybody stands on the board and it takes ages to actually learn how to surf. So my expectations were really low and the more surprised I was when I actually stood on the board five times. Great fun!
Sydney
The bus arrives at six in the morning and I am quite happy that I don't have to travel by bus in the near future. ;-)
Well, I very much shortened this and it's more like a quick update than an extensive report. You probably didn't even read all of it anyway. ;-)
posted at 18:05