Day 21 to 24 - Sydney

Sydney at night

Darling Harbour

We arrived in THE city of Australia, in Sydney.
After we've checked in at our hostel we had a short walk through the neighbourhood.
We enjoyed the city, did some shopping and sightseeing.
A visit of Chinatown, Darling Harbour and of course the Opera House with Harbour Bridge is a must - so we did it.
In Chinatown we discovered a big market hall, in which you can buy whatever you need or not need.
We saw dentist accessories beneath dancing toy-dogs and food.

Batman - we know where he lives...

Cockatoo at the Botanic Garden

Darling Harbour is a nice place with alot of restaurants and bars and it is used as chill-out area for families.
Now to our personal highlight of Sydney, the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. It was amazing to see these two famous buildings in real life and not only at the internet or on television.

Bondi Beach

We came back at the evening to take some nice pictures after the sunset.
Unfortunately it was very windy but the result was good, so we have attached some samples for you.
After we've finished the photo tour it began to rain and we got wet but it was worth the trip.

Bondi Beach

We spent our last day at the Bondi Beach, where we both get a "little" bit tanned - we are red like a tomato.
Today we are flying to Brisbane, see you soon and take care!

 Many greetings from Sydney

 Andi & Gerd

Sydney Skyline

Day 18 to 20 - Blue Mountains National Park

Blue Mountains with the three sisters on the left

On day 18 the weather was not as good and we had a long distance to our next place where we want to stay so that we drove some houndred kilometres till Wollongong where we stayed for the night.
The day ended with a nice barbeque and nearly 1kg rumpsteak.

Now it was time going to the Blue Mountains, listed in the Unesco World Heritage list.
The name of the Blue Mountains comes from a fine mist of oil in the air exuded from the large eucalyptus trees in this area.
Our first stop was at a waterfall where we had a short walk through the forest to the top of the waterfall.
Afterwards we had another stop at the "Three Sisters", a famous rock formation within the Blue Mountains.
For our dinner we choose a kind of fast food pizzeria, so we ate pizza for the first time since we are abroad from Europe, and let's say - it's a different style of pizza.

Andi's waterfall :-)

On the next day it was time to go to Sydney which is about 80km away but befor we had some stops on interesting lookout points within the national park. On one of these lookouts, there was another big waterfall, Andi wants to go to the bottom of the waterfall. Gerd refused, so Andi went alone downstairs the slippery rocks.

Our camper on the left

The way down to the bottom was mentioned with one hour. Andi did the whole way down and back in 36 minutes. Andi was exhausted afterwards.
We continued our way to Sydney and finally we arrived there on friday afternoon after 1864 kilometres from Melbourne.

Day 16 to 17 - Wilsons Promontory National Park

Wilsons Promontory

Wilsons Promontory National Park

Our 16th day in Australia began a little bit cloudy. Although we decided to go to our target for today, the Wilsons Promontory National Park.
Arrived at the park we went to the visitor centre to feed us with some information about the park. We got a walking plan from the area and so we decided to do a six kilometers walk.
We walked in an area which was affected by a bushfire 2009 and it is amazing to see how fast the nature regenerates.

Lakes Entrance

At the end we walked along the rainforest where we saw not so much birds as expected.
Now it was time to relax and what's better to relax as chilling on the beach.
The beach was not just a beach, the Squirky Beach, so the name, was one of the best we both ever saw - clearly water, snow white and not crowded.

Squirky Beach

Squirky Beach

Ninety Mile Beach

Over night we stayed on a campingground near the national park.
At the next morning we woke up early and went to Lakes Entrance, a lovely city and also the end of the Ninety Mile Beach - A narrow strip of sand stretching for more than 90 miles (150km).

Day 15 - Penguin Island

Our plan for today was to visit Phillip Island. The island is famous for the penguin parade and the wildlife as well for the Moto GP racing circuit.
Our two stops on the island covered these highlights.
Before we drove to the island we bought some food for the lunch at the supermarket. We choose some pastasalad and some bread but it was not a good decision, so we didn't ate alot of it.
Swan Lake was our first major stop on the island. We can highly recommend to stop at the lake and to do the boardwalk. We saw alot of wild animals, dozens of kangaroos, wallabies, rabbits, birds and so on.









At the evening we head up for the penguine parade, we arrived there at about 7:30pm and the scheduled time for the arrival of the penguins was 8:52pm.
The penguins emerge from the sea after sunset and waddle up the beach to their nesting areas.
It was cold and it was a long time to wait, but it was worth to see the little penguins waddling out from the water.
Our day ended with the drive back to the mainland where we stayed for overnight at a parking area.

Day 10 to 14 - Melbourne

Our tenth day in Australia began with a walk to explore the city of Melbourne.

Melbourne

We started at our hotel and went to the Degraves
Street, which is a spot with many restaurants and lovely cafes. Walking through this streets reminds us a little bit of staying in an european city e.g. Brussels. If you are in Melbourne watch out for this street, it is a nice place to visit.
On the next day we discovered China Town which is full of restaurants from every asian flavour. We had our lunch for this day in a Korean restaurant.
After we've finished Gerd was looking for a battery for his watch (he is doing that since we are in Australia), but without sucess - which is more a problem of Gerd than of the shops. Most of the time Gerd forgot the watch or he forgot to buy the battery.

Crown Casino

The evening ended with a visit in the Crown Casino, which is one of the largest casinos in the world with more than 2000 poker machines and 350 table games.  We didn't spend any money in the casino but Gerd is now Signature Club Member of the Crown Club and got 5 australian dollar as a gift.

Rooftop of our Hotel

Melbourne is a city with a lot of shops, small restaurants and cafes. So we enjoyed our remaining days in Melbourne with walking through the streets and especially we enjoyed our hotel which had a whirlpool at the rooftop. At hungry jacks (Burger King) we tried the summer special - a burger, small fries and FROZEN COKE for only $ 3,95. We must say: Never again frozen coke.
On saturday we catched our camper  for the journey from Melbourne to Sydney, it is very old and basic...

We will share our experience with the "new" camper in the next days here in our blog.

Skyline at night

Eurreka - The highest building in Melbourne and the 2nd highest in the southern hemisphere

Day 6 to 9 - Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road - Twelve Apostles

 

After we left Kangaroo Island we looked for a camping ground to stay over the night.
Finally we found a really nice place in Victor Harbor which is about 60km away from Kangaroo Island.
It was a cold night, especially to sleep in the tent was not very comfortable.
On the next day we had another stop at a supermarket to buy some food for our breakfast and also for the dinner (noodles with tomatosauce are very common).

Blue Lake

Our next stop was Mt. Gambier, the city has one highlight: The Blue Lake.
In fact it was really that breathtaking blue. Flo was deeply impressed and couldn't take his eyes off it anymore.

Now it was time to go to the camping ground and to have our dinner, the first night by rain in the tent followed...

On the way to Port Campbell, which was our next over night stop, we saw the first highlights of the Great Ocean Road. In the evening we decided to wake up very early to see the sunrise at the "Twelve apostles" which is the best part of the road.

Twelve Apostles

The Arch

It started to rain again so that we decided that all five of us will sleep in the camper for the night, two on the front seats and three in the rear.
On the next morning we woke up early but it was still raining so we slept until 9am before we left Port Campbell. The weather has changed afterwards and we enjoyed the remaining day on the Great Ocean Road.
After another night in Geelong, we arrived in Melbourne on the 7th of february where we stay for the next days.

We five at the twelve apostles

Day 5 - Kangaroo Island

Evening on Kangaroo Island

Sunrise

Is there any difference? :-)

We had our first camping night on kangaroo island (many more will follow) and we woke up very early to see the stunning sunrise. After a short rest in our camper we went to Seal Bay where we watched a wild sea-lion colonee.
It was an incredible feeling to see these animals in wildlife and not in a zoo.

A lunchbreak followed before we arrived at Vivonne Bay to have a lookout at the nice bay and the clear, deep blue water of the ocean. Some time later we saw our first coalas and some kangaroos.

Vivonne Bay

Baby Sea-Lion

Remarkable Rocks

Our next stop was the Admirals Arch and the Remarkable Rocks, a surrealistic building of rocks which has been arised many thousand years ago.

Gerd at the rocks

Lighthous on the way

Now we had two hours left to catch our ferry and to have another fuel stop (consumption about 15l/100km) before we left the island and went back to  the mainland.








This was our day on Kangaroo Island... now we are on the way to the Great Ocean Road interrupted by some stops at interessting locations.

Day 3 & 4 Perth - Adelaide

On the way from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island

Our camper

The plan for our third day was to go via Perth to Adelaide...but it came different.
The day started as the day before with an early wake up call at 4am. We went to the Singapore airport and flew to our stopover destination Perth (stopover should last for two hours) where we should get our domestic flight connection. On the immigration counter we had to queue up and the queue was really long, so that we had to wait for about 45 minutes.
Afterwards we proceed to the last check...a dog checked if we have any food or other prohibited items with us. I (Gerd) "forgot" a yellow mango which I bought in Singapore in my backpack and the dog was happy about his sucess to found the fruit...I'm not...
After some minutes and a precise instruction that it is not allowed to bring any food to Australia (I ticked on the immigration form already that I have no food with me) were we able to go on.
Finally we passed all checkpoints and had a look for the gate of the flight to Adelaide...without any sucess.
Some questions later we knew that we need to go to the domestic terminal via a shutte bus. We checked the time-schedule and the next bus was at the time of the take off of our flight.
So we took a taxi and it took about 15 minutes to the domestic "terminal", indeed that was not another terminal, it was antoher airport although the airportcode and name was the same!
We arrived 40 minutes prior take off at the airport and we get the information that we are too late, so we went to the qantas-counter and complained so that we got another flight next morning. The problem now was that we didn't had an accomadation in Perth, after some phonecalls we found a place to stay for the night in a quite crazy hostel. After a really nice but expensive dinner in Perth we went to bed in our too hot and sticky room.


Day 4  Adelaide

Another day with an early wake up at 4 am.
We need some time to get a taxi but finally we went to the airport and we arrived in Adelaide one day later than planned.
Here in Adelaide we picked up our camper and with our vehicle and first experiences on left-hand driving we went to the hostel of Julia, Tanja and Flo who want to join us on our trip to Melbourne.

Julia, Tanja and Flo

Our trip goes on with us five on the way to Kangaroo Island where we arrived in the evening after an one hour trip with the ferry.