New Years Eve in Sydney

Hallo,

the last entry for Australia. New Years Eve, New Year 2010! An impressive ending for our journey through Australia.
The fireworks, which are undeniably THE highlight of a New Years Eve in Sydney were fabulous! Really, really great! Every hour from 9pm on there was a small firework then at 11:30, 11:45 and then at 0:00 lasting 15 minutes increasing in intensity till the end! Incredible!

At every possible viewing point in the city there were thousands of people, mostly tourists (80% of them German, as far as I could hear ;-) ) and the whole day of 31st was one MEGA-event in the city.
Now I've had enough of crowds and any aggregations of people for the whole new year 2010 ;-)

We wish you all

A WONDERFUL, SUCCESSFUL and HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010!!!!

Here are some pictures for some impressions and for the memory only...as the quality is more than questionably ;-) (it was really hard with my small camera and no tripod!!), but nevertheless they show a little bit :-)

Kisses and hugs
Renate

Sydney....our last station in Australia.....

We spend our last days here, again in Sydney... and encounter rain and clouds! This is not supposed to occur in summer in Sydney!!! (But we are glad, we had sunny weather at least the last time we were here in Sydney about 2 weeks ago. )

What to say about Sydney?
It's big, modern, full of people, full of restaurants, bars, coffee houses, full of great, impressive architecture, full of backpackers and tourists, full of cars which some backpacker wants to sell (thank god, we got rid of ours a long time ago ;-) ) museums, art, fast-food restaurants, full of all kinds of people......full of live.
Take a look at the pictures.
It's a perfect city to hang around. Either with full sight-seeing schedule or - more like us this time - relaxing without doing much....

We try to let sink in all the impressions of the last months, which are a lot.
We are a bit tired and thus our days are more like:
sleep long, breakfast relaxed, walk around, drink coffee, watch people, walk around some more, have a afternoon-nap, eat, drink and go to sleep again

Instead of:
get up early, pack things into the car, drive, get out, walk around, take pictures, be in the heat, get in the car, drive, find sight, get out, look, read, walk, drive some more, look for toilet, stop for toilet, drive, get out, walk, check things, drive, find way, look for night accomodation, get out, unpack things, cook, eat, shower, fall onto the bed, sleep.

We hope you are all well and send you kisses and hugs!!!
Renate & Mirko

Outback - our last Good Bye

Hallo,

while you were shoveling the snow from your front porch and hurriedly bought the last christmas presents we have been driving through the sandy, dusty, hot (41 degree C), sunny and strange Outback again. We rented a small car and rushed away from the crowded east coast and Sydney to 'get lost' in the wastness of the Outback again.
We visited strange towns and stranger places:
slept in the underground to avoid the heat in White Cliffs: Opal Mining Town; listened to Christmal music in Broken Hill; hunted any available shadow in Silverton (Ghost Town, where the movie "Mad Max" has been filmed); shipped on the Murray River in Echuca; unfortunately the "Bushranger Hall of Fame was burned down to the grounds 12 month ago ;-); lookd at the skeleton of a Thyrannosaurus rex; walked between impressive sand formations in Mungo National parc; marveled at a Giant Dish facing the Universe....and no to forget the flies again ! ;-)

Again it was an amazing experience to drive for hours on end through nothingness:
"Impressive! Great!" as well as "I never ever could live here!" crossed our thoughts all the time simultaneously :-).

AND!!! Believe it or not: In the middle of nowhere in 'Broken Hill' we found Santa!!!
Dressed up at 41 degrees sunshine :-0!
But I was not allowed to sit on his lap for the obligatory picture... :-(
Take a look at our XMAS-Special on the right. :-) :-)

We have uploaded a few pictures again.
Our last 'Goodbye' and tribute to the Australian Outback!

We wish you all a good time!!
Renate & Mirko

Canberra - the capital, designed to be

Hallo to all of you!

Canberra is worth an entry! Canberra - as the capital city - has been specifically designed by architects to be the capital city, stamped out of nothing and nowhere in the middle of the Australian bush. And it has been designed to be grand in every aspect of the word ....it can only be driven through by car, as nothing is situated in 'walking-distance' :-)
But there are enough parking spaces planned and provided as well so that's rather convenient. The architecture ranges from spectacular to bold. But everythig has enough space in between.;-)
Here are the pictures.
We spent some pleasent days there, visiting a lot of intersting museums and other exhibitions, which are all free! ;-) Thus our days have been packed and very informative as well.
We even visited the 'Deep Space Communication Center' where there are 'Mega-Antennas' communicating with space-crafts circulating in "deeper space" (as the name truely states ;-) )..was amazing, really.

Now we are in Sydney, where we have managed to sell the car already !! JUCHUUU!
On Wednesday we will leave the city again to travel a little bit inland to have a last look at the 'Outback' and will return to Sydney around the 24th of Dec..

We hope you have about as much 'Chrismas-stress' as we have: "Christmas??? What's that? Where? When? Why? Huuh?"
..and whish you all the best till the next entry ;-)

Kisses and hugs, Renate & Mirko

Walls of Jerusalem - easier said than done :-)

In the last days on Tasmania we had planned to make a track which is called "Walls of Jerusalem". Tasmania got out all tricks it has in store for odd tourists who think they can do a 'nice weather track' just like that. :-)

Attempt I:
When we started the weather was bad: clouds, little showers of rain..but nevertheless we thought the weather would get better - relying on the forecast. But instead we met hail and freezing cold up there on the highland at about 1000m hight. Nature had a completely different intimidating aspect now compared to our first track at clear blue sky. We stayed at the camp up there overnight sustained by gloves, cap, thermo-trousers and thermo-shirt, two sleeping bags. And in the morning of the second day is was...worse. No mountains, no landscape at all around us...0nly clouds...hmpf ... ok, we went down. defeated and sad. :-(

As soon as we reached the valley the sun came out !! Hallo???!! Ahhh! We drove to the next town for the night and when we woke up the next morning there was NOT ONE CLOUD in the sky!!! blue, blue, blue...wherever you looked. and the mountains laughed at us from the horizon! hmpf! we were so angry and disappointed!!!
we vigorously ignored the 'mocking' mountains till 3pm when we could not longer resist:

Attempt II:
We packed our bags again to rush off at 3:30pm up again to the first camp:
We reached the camp at 6:00 pm in the most wonderful evening sun!!! great! great! great! but it seemed to us, that we haven't been here at all! noting looked the same! all seemed different in the sun! The mountains gave the impression that they could not do any harm at all! We enjoyed it very much and were glad to have gone up again despite the double hardship. On the next morning however the weather started to detoriate again. Quickly we claimed the mountain top of 'Mount Jerusalem' and still had some spectacular views although is was already very windy and cold, clouds gathering together loomingly. Quickly again we retreated to the camp took our bagpacks and were eager to get off the mountains as even more bad weather seemed in store. At the moment we reached the car it started to rain and did not stop till we left Tasmania on the same evening.
HA! Finally we beat the weather and made it to the top though! :-) We were glad, it was quite exhausting :-), but it was worth it...more than!

We post again some pictures. Compare the pictures from the first attempt (bad weather) with the pictures from our second attampt (better weather :-) ..it's quite an amazing difference, isn't it ?!
So, Good-Bye Tasmania! Thank you ! It was great!

Tasmania

We are still alive and have managed to find an internet :-)
Although the weather here changes rapidly between rain, sun, warmth and cold we had the luck to do a 4-day-hike in the Cradle Mountain Nationalparc and had blue sky and sun nearly all the time. It was great! We did a part of the famous 'Overland Track' and although we had to carry our heavy bagpacks filled with food, tent, mats and sleeping bag, we enjoyed the track very, very much. We slept on high plateaus under blue sky with the most spectacular panorama imaginable!!! :-)
Take a look at the pictures from the track!
We even had the luck to spot a Wombat roaming around our tent!!! JIPIIIEEEHH! (Just for your information: wombat-shit has the form of cubes about 2x2 cm big.)

After that we drove a lot throughout the whole country mostly along the beautiful coast. It seems that every street, bridge, church, house, harbour, carpark, supermarket, internetcafe etc. ... which looks "historic" has been built by convicts. The british used the island as a prison in the early years and had the "house furnished" completely before they moved in themselves ;-).

Here are the pictures of the rest of Tasmania we saw ;-)!

We will do another track on monday - for three days. We hope the weather will be generous again. On the 26th of November we will go back to Melbourne to continue our journey on the mainland.
We hope you are all well and look forward to hearing from you.

Renate & Mirko

Great Ocean Road, Melbourne and Surroundings

the "Great Ocean Road" is ...great :-) ! The coast is really spectacular. Even though the day was a bit cloudy and cold..it was "awesome" - as the Australian would express it :-)
We reached Melbourne and liked the city immediately. 4 Million inhabitants, many nice builidings, caffes (for Renate :-) ), etc.

In the last days we visited some old towns outside of melbourne, dating from the 'goldrush' in 1850 - 1900, with old mines and old buildings, ( We didn't find gold though :-)) walked in the Grampians (a few 'mountains' (=hills) north-east from Melbourne and didn't have any stress in particular. :-)

The most interesting and adventourous things which occured in the past days:
- our sausage disappeared misteriously (the second time... bugger)!
- we had to buy a new battery for the car from a guy whose whole body was tatooed
- our car-engine smoked ??? dope?
- I caught my dirty sock in the act of fleeing from me
- about 16 kangaroos closed in on our tent at the campground and
- we learned that one of the most important battles in australians history lasted less than 15 minutes, left 30 guys dead and a dog with an posthum award and a statue!! (Eureka stockade, 1854 , Pikeman’s Dog (for those interested in more ;-) ))
..... Wow! What do you say? :-) :-)
I guess our grey hairs are caused by that permanent thrill and stress :-) :-) .

Now we are back in Melbourne and will spend our time here till the 4.11., when we will depart to Tasmania, where we will stay for about 3 weeks. We don't know when we will be able to write again, from Tasmania. So don't worry if you do not hear from us a while. we haven't forgotten you! ;-)

The weather is becoming better now (20 - 30 degrees) and we were able to put on our short trousers again! JIPIIHH! ..ups...guess it's cold in Europe though, isn't it. ;-)

Here are the pictures!!! :-)

Kisses and hugs, hugs, hugs!!! Missing you!!!!
Renate