Goodbye Australia

Hi dear blog readers,

Last time we left off by being on route to Perth. In Perth we visited Jacinta and Erik in their very, very nice house in the Swan valley. Besides the owners terrible taste in soccer :-) ; see the licence-plate on his car (picture) and to make things worse Ajax-AZ was that weekend, we watched online, ending in 4-0.... pffff; it was really cool to meet up and do things together.
They live in a really good wine area and they brought us to the best places to taste and try out the wines (pictures). Obviously we did visit the best brewery as well (picture). While walking we stopped in a didgeridoo shop, and we made some music; well some of us did, others just made noise... :-) (picture).
We visited the old jail, and did an excursion in the underground water tunnels. Those where dug by the prisoners. Officially no prisoners died while digging, but like our guide sad: would it be wise to tell the people in the town that a prisoner did just die in your only available water supply.... To go down in to the tunnels, it was needed to wear a complete climbing outfit (pictures). Ending the day with a refreshing drink near the harbor (picture). On a lunch break we ate some really good kangaroo and crocodile burgers (picture). Together we played a game named "bowls", maybe best described as a combination between "jeu du boules" and "curling". (pictures). Bowls is played in teams, two against two. The aim is, as in jeu du boules, to place your (team) balls closest to a smaller aiming ball. However the playing balls are not round, so the trick is to trow them in a curve on a grass field. And like curling you can bounce the opponent balls out of the game. All in all it is a really fun game.

We moved to Adelaide, and yet again we found some animals that needed feeding. It went well with black swans, but with the pelican it was different... before you know it, a whole hand is in its mouth. That hand is needed to type this blog, so feeding time was cut short... Time to hire a car and start driving the great ocean road. Starting half way between Adelaide and Melbourne, this road has some amazing views (pictures). Famous view point is a place called the 12 apostles, brilliant marketing as there are only 7 or 9 rocks visible. View is anyways amazing. Also spotted our first and only wild koala chilling in a tree just next to the road (picture). Even though we did make a small detour, we didn't spot any others.

Next stop: Melbourne, did some discovering of the city and going to the beach to see wild penguins. They decided to live and bread on an artificial rock pier, becoming a tourist attraction ever since. After spoken with other travellers who spotted only 1 penguin, we where lucky enough to spot 14 (doing better than with koalas and crocs). Funny to see them swimming to the rocks, walking on the narrow sand beach and hiding on their nests between the rocks (no pictures as they only come out after sun set).

Last stop in Australia: Alice Springs and Uluru. This truly was a trip in and to the outback. We slept in 'swags', a sort of bag with matrass combined (pictures). There is no tent or anything, just put down your swag somewhere and sleep under the stars. Did make us wonder about scorpions, snakes and spiders... Specially after a mini museum visit with all of those animals conserved for display. We did also wonder where the red-back-spider was that was on display, but was missing....
Whom would not like to first find a bunch of dead burned tries, take the wood (picture), bring it to camp, make a nice camp fire (picture), even cook on this fire (picture) and afterwards warm yourself by the fire. After all, at night its freezing cold, only 23 degrees (brrrrr), comparing to the 39, in the shadow, during the day. The dead tries are there because of controlled burning done in sort of small land blocks. If not done in controlled environment the land would anyways set fire every so many year because of heat, but than would be extremely dangerous. Small is relative, Aussies consider a 2 hour drive: "just around the corner"... During day time we simply couldn't be outside without anti-fly-nets around our heads (pictures). So many flies, really unbelievable. Luckily flies are only awake when the sun is out. So after sunset it is possible to sleep. And the hours before sunrise are rather nice as well. Before sunrise... indeed, both days the wake up time was 4:30 am, speaking about sleeping late on a holiday...
Uluru is impressive, its sort of an ice berg in the dessert, just like an ice berg most of it is underground. Cool fact: the mountain is getting higher every year, as the surrounding land is eroding away. Cool fact 2: Uluru is actually white, but because of oxidation it has a red surface.
In the surrounding area we did some walking, ending up in one of us almost kicking down hill the other... :-). In Alice Springs we also spotted a road train, a truck that pulls three freight cars, making them longer than 50 meters (picture). Its a good idea to stay out of there way. Because of their weight the brake distance to come to a stop from 100 km/h is really long. This also explains the bull (or kangaroo) bar on the front. While on the road the simply don't break for animals... Besides the dust train is enormous. But they are the best way to transport stuff around the outback.
Our last evening with the tour group we went to a backpackers bar (pictures). That evening was pizza with big-jugs-of-bear evening. -> brilliant...

See you from New Zealand...