Uni is very busy already, as usual, so it is not too hard to overcome my aussie-homesickness. Australia is still in my mind though and I hope that I will never forget the time I had. Big Russ reminds me regularly…

It feels strange to talk to people who are still in Adelaide via facebook, skype and sms. Some of them just start to realize that they will also have to leave the country in a while. The good thing is that we are going to reunite at the Sziget Festival 2009 in Budapest. I am glad that finally a large number of people already got their tickets and really will be there in august.

Staying in touch is a challenge, but apparently it is one that can be mastered. That makes me happy.

To conclude this entry and also my whole aussie-blog, here is my full field report I wrote for my home-uni. It is written in german and will be uploaded to the university’s website as well, to help future SA exchange students to prepare for their time abroad and to get around in their new environment. If you are interested and capable of the german language, feel free to click here to download the full PDF file.

Thanks to all my faithful readers, friends and family.

Cheers
Thomas

The time has come. I finally bade Adelaide Good Bye. I am happy that I had such a nice last week and I really thank all the good “left-over” Adelaide people for being such good friends. I was really happy to meet you guys again before I left the continent. If you ever need a place to stay in Germany, please do not at all hesitate to contact me, I will be there.

Special thanks go to the Norwood Crew, who are probably the coolest people on earth.

I will miss you guys!

At the moment, after approximately 11 hours of flight, I am waiting at Singapore Airport for my transfer to the next 14 hours on board of my Boeing 747-400.
Entertainment-Program and Food are good this time.

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Well, finally before I leave Australia, everything comes to a happy end with the South Australian Plastic Bag Ban! I hope that the other states will follow!

Actually I wanted to learn Kite-Surfing with Richard before I have to leave Oz, but as usual I am running out of time.

At least we made it to a day Kiting (without surfboards) on the beach at Largs Bay yesterday, which was quite a lot of fun and a new experience for me. Feeling the Kite’s force for the first time, I was quite happy not to be on the water but on the beach instead. Look how high it was pulling Davinia, Richard and me into the air!
Funzies.

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This was one of my major highlights before leaving Australia: The WOMAD Festival in Adelaide (WOMADelaide). I was really happy to see The Cat Empire, which is probably my favourite Australian band, performing live on stage on Sunday night.

The first song they played was the one me and some of my friends had been waiting for the most: “In My Pocket”, the official Soundtrack of our first Great Ocean Road Trip. They were fantastic and the atmosphere was stunning. This meant the sound of Australia to me, and more than that.

Afterwards we saw the very last performance of “The Andi and George Band” before they officially split up. What a pity, as we had just discovered their funky music!

To conclude the festival, we raved hard to the breathtaking performance of Africa’s best DJ: Dino Moran.

The next festival to see me will be the Sziget in Budapest, August 2009, where we will celebrate our Adelaide reunion!

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It was really fun to watch him jump and see Camilo with his first pole-contact (which looks quite professional to me ).

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Coopers – Australian Naturally Brewed.

Probably being Australia’s best beer, Coopers have strongly supported my stay Down Under!
For this reason, I decided to go on one of their Brewery-Tours (with tasting).

The money spent for the tour goes to the Coopers Foundation and is used for charity purposes. This makes me feel especially good about it.

The Tour was pretty interesting! One delicious side-fact: Nearly all the ingredients used in Coopers’ brewing process come from South Australia, except for one particular type of hops which they get from Tasmania. My two favourite Australian states united in a brown stubby of wonderful beer.

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Thank you very much, Harris Scarfe Man, for being such a cool Adelaide institution!

My last day in Perth – and my last day travelling Australia.

To finish my trip, the road took me down south yesterday. I visited the Margaret River Area in the far south of Western Australia, with wine tasting, a free flight eagle display, a walk through Mammoth Cave and finally, as a highlight and proper conclusion to my “big loop” around the continent, the most southerly point of WA, where the Indian and the Southern Ocean meet.

On my way back to Perth I had a stop at a very last attraction: THE LONGEST WOODEN JETTY IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE! Walking down the incredible 1841 metres on wooden panels of Busselton Jetty towards the ocean, I reflected on how amazing the last months have been and realised, that I was now ready to go home; go home to Adelaide… and finally go home to Germany.

Walking down this jetty was also a tribute to Alexis, Alex, and Richard – the people I was meant to see the Southern Hemisphere’s longest jetty before (but that’s another story).

After a sleepless night I caught my plane to Adelaide this morning. I spent half the flight thinking about what it will be like to come back to this country and which parts worth seeing I had left out on my trip. I already have quite a few things on my list for next time.

In Adelaide Richard picked me up from the airport and took me to the Norwood house, where Camilo and my other former house-mates, Davinia and Paris, were welcoming me. I am glad to get “asylum” here in the lounge, so I can spend my last six days in Australia around nice people in a place I love.

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I could maybe fill several pages raving about Perth’s positive vibe. But I really want to spend my time to suck up more of it instead, therefore I’ll make it short: I love it!

As Perth is very spread-out (approx. 100km north-south), I went on a guided hop-on/hop-off double-decker-bus sightseing tour today (even more touristy than the pinnacles thing ^^). Within 2.5 hours we went all around the city centre, to the main attractions and through King Park.
Afterwards I relaxed in the two main shopping-malls and watched some brilliant buskers, one of which was doing the best Michael Jackson interpretation I have ever seen.

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Now, as an exception, I really felt like a tourist, finding myself on an organized daytour in one of these massive four-wheel-drive coaches I always used to make fun of. Unfortunately this seemed to be the only (and cheapest) way for me to see everything I wanted to in the short time I had in Perth.

Our first stop was at (just another) wildlifepark. Well, actally they had two things there which I was really happy to see: white albino-kangaroos and a pet-wombat which turned out to be Big Russ’s cousin, Big Babs.

After that I finally got to see what I had been waiting fo so long. I had seen all these pictures before and have been wondering so many times: ‘Where the **** are these odd Pinnacle-thingies?’

Now here they were: The Pinnacles, just about 200km outside of Perth. Some of them being a lot smaller and others a lot bigger than expected, the huge number of random stone poles in the middle of a dessert are a unique phenomenon of nature and really worth a visit!

Afterwards our busdriver took us on a rollercoaster-like 4WD-ride across the large dunes of a nearby sand dessert where we finally went sandboarding! Heaps good!
A delicious sidefact: The weird 4WD-bus was made by a german lory manufacturer (MAN).

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My first day in Perth has been completely useless due to my late arrival. At Darwin Airport our plane was waiting for more than two hours on the runway with the passengers neither being allowed to get out nor to use electronic entertainment-devices. The reason was a broken windscreen-wiper (they told us) which they eventually did not manage to repair. Consequently we had to wait till the rain had stopped so we could take off. I am not sure if Quantas also had a plan for our arrival in Perth in case it was raining there. (…)

On my second day I took a train from Perth to Fremantle, the home of AC/DC-singer Bon Scott, to visit their Sunday-Markets. I was very amazed, when I got a perfectly original tasting “Bratwurst with Senf and Sauerkraut” there, which could not possibly have been any better in Frankfurt itself. I spent the whole day walking around the markets, the harbour and the pretty, ancient town.

A must do in Fremantle: Checking out some of the local micro-breweries to taste their unique beer-varieties. My favourite: Sail Anchor’s Chilli-Beer!

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The ‘Kakadu’ is Australia’s largest National Park and has three World-Heritage listings at a time, hence the three squares in the massive entrance-sign. It has one listing for its endemic flora, another one for its unique fauna, and a third one for its important culture, namely aboriginal people living in absolute unity with their land and having been looking traditionally after their country for thousands of years before the first white explorers even thought about approaching the red continent.

Kakadu National Park furthermore gave birth to some world-famous Australian stereotypes, as ‘Crocodile Dundee’ has been filmed there. Moreover, the ‘Didgeridoo’ is native to this area, and ONLY to this area! It originated from an aboriginal tribe in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, and was spread as an instrument for ceremonial use amongst the people native to what is called today the “Kakadu”. What many people do not know is that actually the didgeridoo has never been traditionally used by any aboriginal tribes outside of this “Top End” area and thus is just an embodiement of commercialism and tourism if found anywhere else than there.
Another little known fact is that the term “didgeridoo”, as much as it might sound aboriginal, is NOT AT ALL an aboriginal word. Aboriginal people use different words for their instrument (for example “Gunbarrk” or “Magoo”), depending on which area they live in. The word “Didgeridoo” in fact is imitative and was created in the 1920s, when a European discoverer tried to explain in words what rhytmic sounds the natives created by blowing into their wooden tubes made from hollow branches.

I went to Kakadu National Park on a guided tour with “Kakadu 4WD Safaris”. This time, I consider it as especially important to mention the company, because if you are going to see the Kakadu I really want you to do it with them!
The reason is the following: ‘Kakadu 4WD Safaris’ is the Northern Territory’s only tour company which is 100% Aboriginal owned and operated by a local guide with heaps of local knowledge. He told us many stories about the area no non-Aboriginal guide could possibly know about and he was openminded and willing to share his culture and his story by telling us about former and todays Aboriginal customs, family-life and how he grew up. He did not hesitate to answer all the questions we had.
Furthermore he only takes small groups (9 people maximum) into the Park, which guarantees you a very intimate atmosphere on the one hand and the ability to travel in a ‘small’ Landcruiser instead of a large coach on the other hand, so you can access some fantastic spots a coach could not possibly get through to.
Finally, being local Aboriginal, they also get permits to access certain areas of the park which are usually closed for tour-companies.
These are just some of the numerous reasons that make this tour a so-much-better-value-for-money-alternative, not to mention the good homemade food you get throughout the whole trip.

Due to the wet-season, the Park was presenting itself in the most beautiful green with lots of life and pumping waterfalls. The downside however was that many roads were flooded and we all got soaked, hiking for hours through pooring rain and wading through knee-deep water. But trust me: It was completely worth this sacrifice.
On day one our guide took us on a Adelaide-River cruise with his own small boat, where he fed some wild crocodiles with buffalo meat (only allowed in the NT!) and demonstrated, how high they are able to jump! Afterwards we went to a very impressive aboriginal art site where he told us some cool stories and taught us how to read the paintings.
The day two highlight was a 16km bushwalk (where bush really and literally means bush and not trail/track/way/boardwalk/whatever). Our guide took us to some fantastic waterfalls, cascades and rockpools, where we went swimming in the parks awesome drinking-quality water, refreshing ourselves from fighting our way through two metres high grass and climbing steep, slippery rocks. At night, back at our camp (with bush-shower and all that outdorsy stuff), we got Gunbarrk (Didgeridoo) lessons.
On day three we visited another cool waterfall and went for a swim again, before we drove back to Darwin. On our way back we visited an aboriginal Didgeridoo shop, where they were also handcrafting the instruments. Here I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play with their pet: a 2.5m long cobra named ‘Cuddles’, which apparently loved to hang around my neck and body.
Finally, I took a picture with the stuffed corpse of the Buffalo Charlie from “Crocodile Dundee”, which can still be seen at his former home, a pub just outside the National Park.

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Have you ever been wondering, why so many Australians drive these huge 4×4-Diesel-Cars with snorkels although Diesel is much more expensive over here than unleaded petrol?

Have you ever been wondering why tourism in Australia is such a seasonal thing?

Do you want to know why I am really happy that we sold our car in Cairns instead of driving to Darwin with it?

The answer to all these questions is simple: Monsun!

Please enjoy the following road-pictures which I have taken from a Landcruiser’s co-driver seat during monsun season in the Top End.

Always keep in mind: You can drive as long as your snorkel is above the surface and if your vehicle moves side-wise, just open the doors to let the water come through. This is no joke.

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It has been a while since I’ve had the last one of these highly addictive South Australian coffee-drinks! Since we had left SA, there was no chance to get a Farmers Union Strong anywhere. Just the really sweet stuff is sold in every state whilst the strong brand, which I am officially hooked to, is just available in SA and…. THE NORTHERN TERRITORY!! (Here we go now!)

It felt good.

Darwin is a very special place on planet earth. With just about 80,000 inhabitants, it forms the tip of the ‘Top-End’, what the upper part of the Northern Territory is called. 
I think the Lonely Planet’s definition of Darwin this time might give you a pretty good impression of the diversity of people making Darwin a very colourful and vibrant place on earth:

“People hailing from at least 56 countries make up the mellow, modern metropolis of Darwin. This sociable hub is where non-Aboriginal meets Aboriginal (Larrakia), where urban meets remote, and where industry meets idleness. The city attracts itinerant workers and visitors from around Australia and its university and port bring students and sailors. The population ebbs and increases with the seasons. Forty percent of the population only settled in the last 40 years, the majority, like you, intending only to stop by but ending up staying. [...]“

This generally sums it up very well. I would just like to add, that Darwin has been destroyed and rebuilt six times during the last century. Twice (after the Japanese bombing-attack in World War Two and after Cyclone Tracy on Christmas morning in 1974) the whole city had to be rebuilt completely from scratch after enormous damage in both cases (400 out of 11,200 houses were still standing after Tracy had come through). Four more times the city has been damaged by cyclones since then, but by far not as much as by Tracy so that just parts had to be rebuilt again. This stormy past (and present) seems to add to Darwin’s population sticking together as a strong community.
Moreover, still facing strong cyclones every year, Darwin has special regulations on buildings, for example the need for a bunker which lets people survive a cyclone with a wind-speed of more than 400 kilometres per hour. This is the speed that Cyclone Tracy was estimated to have after the airport’s electronical storm-measurement equipment had broken under Tracy’s massive force. Facing these special safety-regulations and the fact of being set up during the seventies, many buildings in Darwin sadly are dominated by plain concrete (one of which even is a chinese temple). 
The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory have awesome exhibitions on this topic and basically have been my main source of information for this entry. Apart from that there are numerous memorial sites and ruins visible all along the city-centre.
It is quite helpful for the Darwin’s outer appearance, that there are still green bits of rainforest left within the city-area or arranged in Darwin’s great botanical gardens, forming a nice but odd contrast with the concrete buildings. So do some monumental giants of the jungle which still remain with the city having been planned around them – like the “Tree of Knowledge” in front of Darwin City Counsil for example.
Politically Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory, which in turn is not an independend state but traditionally belonging to South Australia. The NT has got its own parliament though, hence the impressive Parliament House which also inhabits the Northern Territory Library within its southeast-asian looking walls.
Darwin also has the typical australian-style shopping precinct in the centre of the CBD, which appearantly is an obligation for every major Australian city. Darwin’s one is called ‘Smith Street Mall’.
Where life is much more vibrant during certain times in the day in fact is at Darwin’s wharfs, which are surrounded by fish and chips shops and form a magnificent place to watch the sunset from.

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Friday, 20th February 2009

Our car is sold! – What sounds so easy was actually a lot of trouble. Because of the recent floodings Cairns was not inhabited by many backpackers at the time and locals facing the economic crisis do not like buying cars at the moment anyways. We actually had a buyer for our car, who responded to one of our numerous adverts, had a closer look at the car, had a test-drive, let us clean it properly within hours of work, gave us his promise to buy it for an agreed $3500 and then unexpectedly changed his mind when we were meant to meet him at the registration office for transfering the ownership. He had to go back to Korea, he told us. 

As we now were running out of time, having had all our flights booked already, we started to check out our last resort: The car-dealers in Cairns. The situation was horrifying. We were told, that currently many backpackers were not able to get rid of their cars at all so there were heaps of abandoned, good-condition travel cars parked at the airport with the numberplates taken off. Some dealers just used to tow these away for free and sell them afterwards. For this reason, combined with the bad economical situatiuon resulting in packed dealer-carparks, hardly anybody was willing to give us just a single cent for our car. The best dealer-offer we could get were $1500.

Finally, we could sell our car last-minute privately to a guy who organizes cheap, reliable cars for students of a local language school. $1600 is what we finally got for it. 
Well, at least we COULD sell it and did not have do abandon it like so many others at the moment. Furthermore, knowing that a student will get it, we sold it at least for a good purpose. Finally, regarding the fact that the money was split between the two of us and that the exchange-rate was on our behalf, we have each lost $950 (or 480€) on our vehicle. This is actually still cheap for running a perfectly good 220hp-car across a whole continent. After all, it was still cheaper than if we would have rented a car for this trip and we are looking at it as the price for unlimited flexibility and the ability to move off the beaten track whenever we wanted to.

Our roadtrip was officially finished now and Alex and me split up. He went back to Adelaide, whereas I flew to Darwin, facing my next adventure: The Top End.

We successfully accomplished our mission: Our Roadtrip “Adelaide to Cape Tribulation”!

You may ask: “Why Cape Tribulation?”

Well, first of all, Cape Tribulation is the most northerly place on the east cost of Australia which can be accessed by a non-4WD car. Secondly, the Daintree National Park rainforest in far north Queensland is just amazing and Cape Tribulation is THE opportunity to have a sneak peak into it.

To show you how special the Daintree really is, here some mindblowing facts:

• It is the oldest continuously growing rainforest on earth (the rainforest we see today is 120 million years old, some tree-species are 400 million years old and there are still mosses growing which age an estimated 1 billion (!) years) – A whole bunch of dinosaur-food!
• It is home to the Hercules Moth, which is the largest moth on earth (a single wing is the size of a dinner-plate).
• It is home to the Golden Oak Spider, which is the largest web-weaving spider on earth (growing up to the size of a dinner-plate).
• It is home to the Jack Fruit, which is the largest fruit on earth (way larger than a dinner-plate ).
• It’s costal area is home to the Box Jellyfish, which is considered the most deadly animal in the world – swimming in the ocean without a protective stinger-suit is very likely to lead to death within 10 to 15 minutes.
• It is home to two thirds of Australia’s bird species.
• It is home to an estimated 200,000 species of insects, just about 60,000 of which have been catalogued so far.
• One hectare of Daintree Rainforest inhabits more different plant species than whole North America.
• The whole area is surrounded by depressing place names (Mount Warning, Mount Sorrow, Mount Misery, Black Mountain, Cape Fear, etc.) because of Captain Cook’s dificulties in sailing past Cape Tribulation – which itself is an oldfashioned word for ‘trouble’ – when he was exploring the area.
• It is north of a ferry river-crossing, beyond which usually no police is operating anymore (drink-driving is common in the area).
• It is north of Australia’s most northerly McDonalds (WOW!).

We stayed at the Cape Tribulation Beachhouse, which is located right in the middle of the rainforest. It’s wooden dorm-buildings are surrounded by Golden Oak and Huntsman Spiders and overgrown by lots of palm trees and huge ferns. As we came in the middle of the wet-season, nature was showing off with brilliant green leafs and colourful flora.
But also fauna was quite active and happy about the rain, as we found out during our guided nightwalk through the rainforest: We saw a big python, some dragons and lizards, endangered frogs, fireflies, centerpedes, bats and a huge variety of different insects and especially spiders. The most amazing ones for me were the trap-door spider and the net-casting spider, which each do exactly what their names imply. Another really freaky thing was a field of fungus/mushrooms, which was bioluminescent and thus was glowing in the dark.
Taking pictures was only rarely possible, because the camera’s flash could harm the animals. Therefore you have to be satisfied with what you get and use your imagination for the rest I told you about, just like so many times before.
The price we paid for seing all this natural beauty was being wet for the whole time we spent in the rainforest, as it was either raining cats and dogs or – if the rain stopped for a few minutes – too humid to get dry. At the same time it was too hot to change cloths because they would be wet of sweat again within minutes anyways.

A little known fact before I finish: The ‘custom’ roadsign above has been illegally modified by a Daintree local. It was eventually showing a speed-bump warning on the top and an emu-warning on the bottom. A smart businessman came along, saw the funny piece of art and printed it on t-shirts which are now being sold in souvenir-shops all over Australia. Suddenly the ‘artist’ turned up, officially confessed his deed and is now still sewing the business guy in court because of the ‘theft’ of his idea.

OK guys, that’s it for now! Kick back, relax, take in the pictures, let’s do it!

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World Heritage listed, reaching from Gladstone, Queensland up to the coast of Papua New Guinea, the majestic Great Barrier Reef is internationally known as THE number one ‘divers mecca’ in the world, closely followed by the Red Sea. The reef furthermore is the only living creature on earth which can be seen from the moon! Of course, we wanted to get much closer to it than that and thus went on a three days stayaboard trip, including 10 dives on some of the GBR’s most beautiful sites and as much snorkeling-opportunities as the bigest water-maniac could possibly wish for.
Our dive-boat, the Kangaroo Explorer, is a ship built not to go back to the harbour more often than once a month. Thus it keeps going from one dive site to another whilst the passengers are being brought and picked up by a smaller dayboat, the MV Sunkist.

As Alex and me both were certified open water divers already, we decided to use this trip to extend our diving skills by making our “advanced adventure diving” licence. The latter includes deep-diving up to 30m, night diving (we did two night-dives at the reef), underwater-navigation with and without compass, computer-diving, boat-diving, fish-identification and underwater-photography!
The whole trip was a real marathon. We got up at five o’ clock every morning and started diving right away. Then the day continued with an alternation of eating and diving. We used to stay out of the water just long enough so that our Safety Intervall between the dives was not risky for our lives. But while we were waiting for that, we could also go snorkeling of course, for not wasting any time.
(For all the geeks out there who know a little bit about diving: After the first dive on day two we went off the tables already and had to use a dive computer from then on.)

The marine life at the Reef just blew me away! We saw some reef sharks, sting rays, turtles, giant clams, sea cucumber, millions of colourful fish and the most beautiful variety of corals you could dream of.

Alex and me have taken hundreds of pictures of which I just uploaded a small collection for you guys. I hope you enjoy the album which mainly consists of pictures taken between 10 and 25 metres of depth. There are reasons why there are no pictures of sharks: First of all, if you see one, for some reason you seem to forget that you have a camera. Secondly, reef sharks are afraid of the bubbles coming out of diver’s regulators and therefore take off as soon as they see you. We tried to follow one during our first nightdive, but after like 25 metres we gave up, because it was too fast. ^^
Furthermore you will not find any pictures of turtles. Unfortunately we were not lucky enough to have the photocamera with us when we saw them. But in like two weeks time, I will upload a video taken by our videographer, which amongst other things shows me scratching a big turtle’s back.

Special things to mention:

I was amazed by the pressure on our body in a depth of 30 metres. Our instructor took an empty plastic-bottle down, which due to the pressure was flat as a piece of paper at -30m, but popped back into its natural shape during our accend back to the surface. Furthermore he took a raw egg down and cracked it underwater; it stayed in its egg-like shape and we could smash it to each other with our hands like a tennis-ball.

What I liked most about night-diving are these clever, big, red fish which have learned to use the light of diver’s flashlights/torches to hunt. Whenever you see a small, ugly, grey fish, the only thing you have to do is to point your light at it and in nine out of ten cases a big red one comes along and goes *hump* – small fish gone. I helped nature to kill four fish this way.

We found Nemo.

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