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A Rock Tour, a Reunion, Singapore and... The End!

2008-07-30T06:47:00.007+02:00

It is 1:07pm, Singapore time, and this evening we'll board a KLM airplane to Amsterdam. It's true, this is the very last time we can let you know what we've been up to over the last weeks. This weekend Paul will be back with his family in Germany and Berrie will be, er... yes, with his family in Friesland! That is no reason to be sad (just yet!) though, because over the last few weeks we took a lot of pictures and saw a lot of things so we can make sure this last travelupdate is going to be one of the best...

In Darwin we took the shuttle bus to Darwin Airport. We had a quick and nice flight to Alice Springs, with clear skies so we were able to get an impression of the landscape (which was empty anyway) underneath us. On the airport we were picked up by a courtesy bus from the Youth Hostel we were staying (funny system - they pick you up from the airport in order to get you in, but when you want to get back you're told to book a taxi or airportshuttlebus!) and so we were suddenly in the very center of Australia!

We liked the towncenter of Alice Springs surprisingly much, the main mall has a good atmosphere and about half of the shops are aboriginal art galleries. We didn't have much time to have a look, because the next day we had to get up at 4.30. In the absolutely ridiculous cold morning we stood there with our shorts and little tourbackpack, waiting for the tourbus.

The bus came and soon it became clear that we had a very, er... special tourgroup! There was a Serbian/Polish family with their 19 year old son, a group of loud and noisy but very nice Irish/Scottish girls and then there was a mixture of different nationalities (Slovakish (?), German, Italian, Finnish, Dutch, Swiss...) and that all in a group of only 21 people! Our tour guide, Dylan, told us right away what this tour was about; a lot of driving, a lot of walking and a lot of fun...!

Obviously, the first thing to do was driving; well we only had to sit in the bus for several hours. Our first destination was King's Canyon. This national park was absolutely stunning! The red/brown rocks in weird shapes give a unique feeling and we were happy to find out that our tour included a good 3+ hour walk and not just a quick look around. We took some great pictures (see pictures on above and below) and visited sites like the Garden of Eden (which looked like just another waterhole to us...).

The end of the day was coming close by then (don't forget, there was a lot of driving again!), so we were heading for a bush "campground". But, on the way there, Dylan suddenly stopped the bus in the middle of nowhere (a term which you can use at any location in central Australia...) because we had to search for firewood! It was done very quickly because everyone was giving a hand and soon there was a nice pile of dry wood on top of the trailer.

So then we arrived at the bush "campground". We suppose they called it "campground" because they didn't know what other word to use, but it was definitely not a campground. The only "facility" was a firepit. Yes, we we're definitely "roughing it" (another favourite Australian term), as we sat on a rolled swag (rough canvas extra sleeping bag with mattress, to use around a normal sleeping bag...) around the campfire (see above). Dylan prepared a meal while we were drinking cans of Toohey's beer that we bulk-bought at a roadhouse on the way (some people bought up to 20 cans!).

You probably expect that we sang songs and played games and laughed and had a good time at the fire, but we were way to tired so we layed our swag out and went to sleep. But not for long, because long before the sun rose Dylan woke us all up. After a quick (and to be honest, not very big) breakfast, we moved on to Yulara, the Ayer's Rock resort. There was just enough time to go to the toilet, and then we got back on the bus, moving towards Kata Tjuta. Kata Tjuta is another nature miracle; huge, round and red rocks rise from the flat desert to form this national park. We did the Valley of the Winds walk, a very appropriate name - hats flew off our heads! The walk provided good views (see picture below) and yes - we had a good time again.

It was time to drive to the place where the Rock Tour is all about: the Rock! Or Ayer's Rock, or the official aboriginal name: Uluru! There was time to read about the aboriginal dreamtime stories in the visitor centre, and then we walked a short part of the base walk. Dylan explained a lot about rockpaintings and plants/trees and their use. Uluru might seem small on pictures, but believe us, it was an overwhelmingly big rock and standing right next to it (and touching it) felt really strange (see picture on right)! It was getting late again so it was time to go to the "Coaches Sunset Viewing Area". The people there do know that they are managing a major tourist attraction, so yes it is rather "touristy"... Our bus just fitted in between about 40 other buses, and we all waited for Uluru to undergo its famous colourchange during the sunset. We were very enthusiastic and took way too many pictures, but it was just amazing to see that red giant getting redder and redder - a sight we won't forget (see picture below).

Back to Yulara Resort, and in mean time the group got to know each other a little bit so this evening we did have that games evening! And there was a lot of laughing! Once again, the next morning we got up very early in order to enjoy the sunrise and its warm colours on Uluru. It was absolutely freezing so it was very difficult to get ourselves out of the warm bus. It was definitely worth it, though! We loved the sunrise much more than the sunset. Uluru was literally glowing (see picture below)!

After the sunrise and a quick breakfast we had the time to complete the basewalk, a 9.5km walk around Uluru. It's nice to be able to say that we walked around Uluru, but it's not a very interesting walk, because the rock looks pretty much the same from every side (and it was still freezing cold!). Uluru was the last major stop of our tour, so after that we got on the bus once again and drove back to Alice Springs.

There was one more stop on the way though - the Camel Farm! For only $5 you could go up and down the paddock on a camel's back. And only Berrie was brave (or childish) enough to do this... It was hilarious (see picture on the left).

Back in Alice Springs we were dumped in front of our hostel. This time we got a caravan in the garden of the hostel, which was very nice! In the evening the group met each other at a restaurant, where we had a good time and there was a didgeridoo band, which organised a didgeridoo competition... There was no choice whether to participate or not - everyone had to. It was embarrassing but also a lot of fun! Most people only managed to make disgusting farting sounds, but some got into it pretty well (we're talking about sounds coming out of the didgeridoo!).

That was the Rock Tour! We had one more day to see Alice Springs and then flew into Perth! It was good but also a little bit weird to come back there, especially coming back to Midland and Swan Valley. It was where we started off and in some way it feels a little bit like our "home in Australia". It was good to talk to Henk-Jan and Paula again!

When we went out for a walk with the dogs in the afternoon we saw a tiny Apollo camper approaching on the street with three people inside that were slightly familiar: Berries family! It felt a little unreal to meet each other in Australia, but it was very good all the same! We shared the cottage in HJ and Paula's garden and the next 3 days we drove around in the little camper. Because we had been to Perth/Midland/Fremantle before, we sort of acted as tourguides and showed them around (see picture below). We had a very good time and the days rushed by, so it was time to say goodbye again, although only for a few days.

Henk-Jan, Erik and Ineke took us to Perth International Airport and we were on our way again, to Singapore as you know. We arrived in the late afternoon and our first few hours in Singapore were, well, not fantastic. It is constantly hot and humid here (we're talking +32degrees and more; even at night its +25degrees)! We can hear people say "what do they complain about", but it's really true - the climate is not comfortable here, at least not this time of the year. We had never been to an Asian city before and even though this might be the most "western-going" Asian city, we were still a little bit intimidated by the huge masses of people and countless skyscrapers. And we had our heavy baggage with us, which didn't make it comfortable to walk around. Still, we had to, because there seemed to be no accomodation left anywhere! We cursed ourselves more than once for not booking our accomodation before we arrived. But in the end we were "lucky". As we went into the fifth dodgylooking hotel to ask, without much hope anyway, if they had a room available, the lady said: "$40" and a young man took us 3 buildings down the street to another man, who took us to another building and showed us a tiny room. By that time we would've accepted anything they offered us anyway, though...

Our hotel is actually not yet a hotel. They are renovating an old building, the toilets still need to be done (which gives you an idea what they are like) and the only thing in our room was a bed. But it was clean AND extremely cheap (20 euro per night!), so we did decide to book it for all of our 4 nights in Singapore. (Picture above: the city is like a big park!)

Singapore is great! You feel safe all the time, there are literally too many shopping malls with too many shops to visit, it is extremely clean (with fines for chewing bubblegum and reusable triantickets, that is no wonder) and very well maintained. It has a parkfeeling over it with lush greenery through the whole city. Older districts like Little India (where we stayed) and Chinatown (see picture on left) still give you an impression of what it used to be like (at least that's what we like to believe!).

So we spent a lot of time in the shopping centers/street malls, visited Chinatown, and had dinner and breakfast in the foodcourts. The price of food here is ridiculous! You pay around 1 to 3 euros for your meal! The supermarket is very expensive, though, so it's no wonder that everyone eats out. (Picture on right: impression of Singapore citylife)

Yesterday we went to Sentosa. It's "Singapore's Resort island". It has a themepark feeling over it (with speakers hidden in treetrunks playing fairytale music), but it looks very good (see picture above). We visited the average Butterfly Park and Insect Museum, took a ride over the harbour in the Cable Train and in the evening we saw the cheesy but eyepopping Songs of the Sea show! Water, lasers, lights, music, explosions, fire - it's an amazing show which attracts a big crowd (picture below: Singapore skyline at night).

A bus took us back to Singapore, and we slept the last night of our long journey, and now we sit in an internetcafe a few doors down from our hotel! The end really has come for this journey, the only thing we'll still do is take the bus to the airport. If you did have the urge to feel sad at the beginning of this blog but you didn't because we told you not to - now you can. We are a little bit sad, too, but we are also very happy and thankful for everything that we have seen and done the last 10 months.

We also want to thank everyone who has been reading our blog! We hope (and this is not very original!) that you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed letting you share in our experiences. Also a huge thanks to everyone in Australia who helped us so much along the way: Henk-Jan, Paula, Sjaak, Angie, Tim, Jenni, Selma!

We can't wait to go travelling again, to who knows where!

Paul and Berrie

4000kms later...

2008-07-16T02:55:00.007+02:00

...we're writing one of our last blogentries for you!

It's only been a few weeks, but they were hectic, stressful and nervewrecking. Those weeks were full of driving, as we had to drive the huge distance from Townsville to Tennant Creek to Darwin - more than 4000kms - in just two weeks to still have time to sell our car!

But anyway, after the Daintree Rainforest we went straight to Cairns. We only spent half a day in the city, as it wasn't that appealing to us. Apart from strolling through some bookshops, there was pretty much nothing to do for us. So the same day we started the long drive from Townsville into the heart of Outback/Remote-Australia. Around that time we also started advertising our car online,because we were a little bit worried that we would end up giving our car to the wreckers if no one would buy it in Darwin...

Well, on the way to Tennant Creek we stayed in places like Richmond (with a beautifully equipped campkitchen!) or Mt. Isa. We decided to stay in Mt. Isa for 2 nights. We took our time to surf through some shops, hang by the pool and just relax. We also went to see "Get Smart!" in the local cinema.

Our next "bigger" stop was Tennant Creek, but once again only for one night as we had a strict schedule. Our only photostop on that way was the sign which said we had just passed the Queensland - Northern Territory border. But as you can see on the photo, there was not much around to see...

Two fellowcampers advised us to stop at Daly Waters, the local pub to be precise. And so we did, and it didn't look like your average pub! Photos say more than words, so have a look at it yourself.

For the next two nights we stayed in Elsey National Park, near Mataranka. The day in the National Park there was filled with swimming in a +34degrees thermal pool - heaven - and walking along Roper River to a series of cascades and lots of swimming opportunities in the river itself (see Paul enjoying the thermal pool on the left). We were a bit scared to dive into the water though, as dozens of signs warned us for the freshwater and salt crocodiles inhabiting the water. But, brave as we are (or at least pretend to be), we dared to step into the water, even though it was only for 20 second-periods. It was absolutely beautiful and we even found our own little private whirlpool (see Berrie enjoying that below)! We really enjoyed that day being completely back in nature.

The next day we went on to drive to Nitmiluk National Park near the town Katherine. Our caravan park was situated near the Park, and in the evening we had several little visitors hopping next to our tent and even trying to nick our food (we're talking about Wallabies)!
An 8kms return-walk took us to beautiful spots like the Katherine Gorge. We had stunning views over the Gorge (see picture below). A different steeps route over rocks took us to a waterfall, which was almost dry though due to the dry season in the Northern Territory. It wasn't quite deep so Paul took the opportunity to have a little swim (see picture on the right).

After exhausting 4 hours we came back to the campsite, took a shower and went to visit Katherine itself. We had an overnight stay in a campsite which was close to the Katherine Thermal Pools - you can just guess how happy we were about that! Even though the water wasn't as warm as in the other pool, we sure enjoyed our one-hour-swim in the clear water.

Our next stop was - surprise, surprise - another National Park! The worldfamous Kakadu NP was the centre of our attention for the next two days. It was a little bit disappointing though, as a lot of the sights such as Jim Jim Falls were only accessible with a 4WD. We stopped at a lookout point before we drove to our bushcamp called Muriela Campground. It ended up being one of our favourite overnight stays, as we had a campfire which gave us enough power to cook a whole meal with it (it also warmed water for tea and for washing the dishes!).

Our second day in the National Park was a bit more exciting, as we visited sights like the Nourlangie Rockpaintings. It is believed that aboriginal people lived in that particular Kakadu area over a thousand years ago! A spectacular lookout point (below) was also part of Nourlangie. After the rockpaintings we stopped at a billabong, the town of Jabiru and a part of wetlands.

On the way to Darwin we also had a very exciting moment! Just as we drove over a bridge, Berrie spotted a crocodile laying in the sun on a shore in the river! We immediately turned, stopped with the car on the bridge (despite the signs warning us "DONT PARK ON BRIDGE") and took a photo of it.

Well, that was pretty much all that we saw and did in the Kakadu. Later that day we arrived in Darwin and had a nervewrecking search for a caravan park with available tent sites. Only after we called 5 parks we finally booked a spot in a caravan park close to the beach!

The first day in Darwin was under the motto: Advertising the car. As you know from our previous blogentries, Darwin is our last stop with our own car! We were busy putting together a leaflet with all the important informations about the car, printing several copies of it, making it look all fancy with textmarkers and putting it on note boards all over Darwin such as internet cafes and youth hostels. We were totally knackered and our nerves were strained like never before as we were really nervous about selling our car.

And - yippie - we had our first call the next day already! Two girls called Hannah and Kelly were particularly interested in purchasing our car, and so two hours after the call they had a look at the car, went for a little test drive and also decided to buy it from us! YIPPIE! You can just imagine how big the stone was that fell off our chests.

The following week was a matter of organizing and packing - we had to reduce the contents of a fully loaded station wagon to the 2x20kg we can take on the airplane. Time rushed by last week but in mean time we did see a few attractions in Darwin. We've tried to get a lastminute tan and found some nice shells on Lee Point Beach, strolled through Darwins botanic garden (even though we never considered ourselves diehard garden fans, we've seen all the gardens in the major cities we visited...), locked Paul up in the very interesting Fannie Bay Gaol Museum (see picture above) and had a look at all the handmade craftwares on offer at Mindil Beachs Sunset Markets.

And yesterday Hannah and Kelly drove our car away, the poor car has to go back to Townsville within 3 days! So we are living like real backpackers again, staying in a hostel in central Darwin. Last night we went to see Mamma Mia: The Movie, which was fun! Tomorrow we'll get on the first of the 4 planes we'll board the coming 2 weeks, so next time you'll hear from us we'll report what we've seen in "the Red Centre", probably from Perth!

In mean time we'll visit a few coffeeshops and cafes, because we're good at that! Yesterday we had a spicy pumpkinsoup for lunch, but, and we're absolutely honest, Jenni: we loved your pumpkin soup much more!

Final distance travelled (in our car): 24471km

"Where the rainforest meets the Reef!"

2008-06-27T03:46:00.006+02:00

This time we're writing from the far north of Queensland, from a town called Port Douglas to be precise. That means we moved quite a few kilometers since our stay in Brisbane. And that means that we saw and did a lot of things!

After our stay in Brisbane we got back on the train and bus to good old Gayndah, where we were excited to pick up our car. We were unpleasantly surprised when we found out that the car still leaked oil, and that basically meant that the car would stay at the mechanic for another week. It made the delay in our travelling schedule even bigger, but we had the best place to stay for those days: even though we didn't travel, we had a very nice week at Tim and Jenni's place: playing ping pong, enjoying their amazing cooking, packing mandarins for their markets and changing our travelling schedule for the coming weeks.

As you may know, we planned to drive all the way back to Perth, which would've been perfectly possible if we would have left 3,5 weeks earlier. Now it would become very tight, so we had to arrrange a different way to be back in Perth on time. So, that means, we have to be in Darwin around the 10th of July, where we will have a week to sell our car. Then, on the 17th, we'll fly to Alice Springs, where we will do a 3 day outback tour from the day after. On the 22nd we take another plane, this time all the way to Perth. There we'll see Henk-Jan and Paula again, but also meet Berries family, as they are flying to Australia tomorrow!

That's about what's still ahead of us, now we'll tell you about what we've done. On the day we finally left Gayndah we didn't drive far, but it was just good to be on the road again. We stayed in Biloela, which was only an overnight stay so the next morning we went on again. This time we drove to Emerald, but on the way we visited the stunning Blackdown Tablelands National Park. There was no one else visiting, so we had it all for ourselves. Our favourite part was the Two Mile Falls. It is the dry season so there wasn't a lot of water, but the surroundings were stunning and it was possible to stand on the edge of the waterfall (see picture below).

Our next stop was Emerald, where we stayed for the night. The next day we drove further to the Sapphire Gem Fields. We wanted to have a look at the Gemstone Information Centre, but it had shut its doors so we just went on to Sapphire, a tiny fossickers town. The friendly man at the Blue Hollow Mine advised us to just walk out to the fields and search for sapphires, which we tried. All we saw were piles of dirt, and even though we're sure it must've been full of expensive stones, it all looked the same to us so we went back to the mine to buy a bag of mine dirt. That means you get a bag of leftover sand/stones, which the miners already fossicked through (see picture above). The next 2 hours we spent searching and washing the dirt, which was good fun! In the end we both had a little bag with some sapphires and zirkons. We both have a gemstone that is suitable for cutting and would make nice jewellery.

The same evening we had trouble finding a place to sleep, all the campsites and motels in country-Queensland were fully booked due to all the dozens of mining sites and their workers. It forced us to drive on way longer than we expected, and we ended up in Mackay. Even here it was very busy (no campsites or youth hostels available), but we were advised to check the McGuire hotel. And so we did! We had the worst night in Australia so far... Our room was located directly above the stage in the pub below, which meant we were enjoying the live band's music all the way until 2am in the morning. We were shaking in our beds (not because of coldness...). It was a huge relief to step in our car the next morning and an even bigger relief to sleep in our own tent in Airlie Beach that evening, because that's where we went next!

Airlie Beach was full of tourists, but we had no problem finding a nice campingground just outside of the city. It was beautifully located in a tropical surrounding, next to the airport... But most of the time we spent in and around Airlie Beach. On the second day we booked a 1-day-tour to the Whitsunday Islands/Great Barrier Reef. (Picture: sunset impression at Airlie Beach feat. Berrie)

Now you also would expect Airlie Beach to actually have a beach, and it does indeed, but no one was swimming in the water due to dangerous marine stingers (even though it is lowseason for them). The only place where you can enjoy a save swim is the Airlie Beach Lagoon - an artificial swimming pool next to the towncentre. It was highly popular with the locals and tourists, so it was packed with people when we decided to give the cold water a go.

On the third day we were excited to go on the tour we booked the day before. At 7.25am a courtesybus took us to Abel Point, a port next to Airlie Beach. One hour later, the tourjet left Abel Point with 60 passengers aboard, to head for the Whitsunday Islands. Our first stop was the Hill Inlet Lookout point, overlooking Whitsunday Island and Whitehaven Beach (see picture left). In the bay where the jet stopped, we also saw some turtles stretching their long necks above the water! Sadly they were a bit too quick for our camera.

After the lookout point we went straight to Whitehaven Beach (see picture above). Even though the wind made the bright sunlight a bit less intense, we enjoyed a nice swim in the crystal clear water and a little bit of sunbathing. When we got back on the boat an hour later, a light lunch buffet was waiting for us to be eaten. While we had our sandwiches, we headed to our snorkeling spot, Border Island Reef.

The Reefjet crew gave us some instructions on how to use the snorkel and goggles ("Don't spit in them!"); we put on our wetsuits, grapped a pair of fins, a swimming noodle (Yes, even the snorkelinstructors advised them a lot) and dropped ourselves from the back of the jet into the water. It took some time to get used to breathing through your mouth only, but eventually we got on with it and could finally enjoy the beauty of the underwater world. (Picture: Paul with snorkeling gear)

It was absolutely amazing and one of our favourite memories of being in Australia!

We also had an underwater camera to capture the colorful corals and fishes, but unfortunately the pictures don't reflect what it actually looks like. We're still going to post two pictures, which we think are quite nice (see pictures right and below).

30 minutes later we got back on the jet, and cruised back to Abel Point. At 4.30pm we arrived back at the port, feeling a little bit wet due to the occasional wave drowning us on the sundeck. Nevertheless, we had a fantastic day at the Whitsunday Island and especially the Great Barrier Reef.

From Airlie Beach we went on to Townsville for a night. We had our tent replaced there for the second time without any problems (Thanks K-Mart!). The next day we went to Cairns, and we planned to stay there for a night or two, but the campinggrounds were just too expensive. We drove on to Port Douglas/Mossman, close to the Daintree National Park (see pictures below).

That's what we discovered yesterday! Daintree National Park exists of dense tropical rain forests, inhabited by crocodiles and cassowaries and other sorts of animals. Unfortunately we didn't see any of those mentioned animals, even though we saw dozens and dozens of signs warning us not to drive over them.

The rainforest itself was another highlight of our journey. It's just like what you imagine a jungle to be like: lush green palms, bushes, trees and clear creeks. We did two boardwalks which showed us the rainforest and a mangrove forest.

And that's it for this blogentry! See you soon!

Distance travelled as of 26/06/08: 20200+ km

Back in the city!

2008-06-09T21:01:00.007+02:00

Yes, we were brave enough to step out of the save environment of Gayndah to continue our journey through Australia! Since our car is still pretty much screwed and only to be fixed by next thursday, we were forced to travel with the bus and the train from Gayndah to Brisbane. It was a last-minute-decision and luckily for us, both bus and train had available seats for us! (Picture: Skyline of Brisbane)

So with the help of Jenni we booked our tickets, packed our backpacks (it is the first time we actually really use them!) and first got on the bus to Maryborough, and later on a train that took us to Brisbane. The cityfeeling was just overwhelming; it seemed like a decade had passed since we last saw a huge shopping mall or a different supermarket than IGA!

With our heavy luggage on our backs we made our way to the caravan park located just 10 minutes outside of the city centre.

We dedicated the first day in Brisbane entirely to shopping, shopping, having a nice coffee in between, then some shopping again, having a snack at subway, and some more shopping. All the lights and the smells of the shops seduced us to buy a little thing here and there. And that basically sums up the first day of our stay in Brisbane. (Picture above: Shopping malls at night)

The second day was a bit more colourful than the one before. Well, apart from a nice coffee in a cafe in the morning, we had a lot more on our schedule to see. First up were the Botanic Gardens, which were, quite frankly, not half as impressive as the Gardens we've seen in Melbourne or Sydney. Either way, we took a nice stroll along the Mangrove Walk (Picture above) up to a bridge that took us to the South Banks, a beautiful strip along the Brisbane River, covered with grassstripes, shops, rainforests and even a little beach! Eventually we wanted to see a movie at night, but after all we decided the choices (such as "Sex and the City" or "What happens in Vegas") did not quite meet with our needs. After seeing the South Banks we went back into the city centre - the City Hall to be precise. We had a look at two expositions, one about the immigration to Australia in modern times and the other about abandoned rooms. Sounds exciting? Well, it wasn't quite something new, but it was very well made and put up. (Picture: Berrie and the South Banks)

We also took a very old lift (about 90 years) up to the middle of the tower of the City Hall. There we had a good view across the centre, even though we were only about 78m above ground! The rest of the day we spent strolling through the streets, watching the world go by and having an occasional ice cream. (Picture: Church in the middle of skyscrapers)

Our third day was going to be a bit different, because it was a public holiday due to the Queens Birthday. So a lot of shops, malls and sights were closed; therefore we stayed at the caravan park all day until the late evening. Our plan was to go online from 10pm until 8am in the morning in one of the plenty internetcafes in Brisbane.

And now here we are writing our new blogentry at 5:35am in the morning! Believe us, we are rather sleepy at the moment, so the following day will be full of soft snoring, little movements and hiding underneath a blanket, trying to get as much sleep as possible.

This week we are also going back to Gayndah to pick up our car, so the next time we update the blog, the kilometercount will have changed, promised!

See ya!

Still In Gayndah...

2008-05-29T04:32:00.000+02:00

Hello!

We would love to provide you with some amazing news about our journey through Australia, but even after one and a half months we are still in Gayndah! And yes we are still picking mandarins aswell. (Picture below: Paul at work)

We can't really say that we've been up to a lot since we work 6 days a week from 6:30am to 4:30pm, and then, after we came home, we hardly have enough time to cook our dinner before the darkness sets in and we have to make our way to our sleeping bags... Life's not easy for a picker. (Picture below: our view during the last 2 months...)

That all sounds a bit negative, but we are still having a good time! We had nice (but very noisy) French (-Canadian) colleagues, and the best boss you can imagine! Every now and then he and Jenni invite us over for a "smoko" (coffee break), with loads of selfmade cakes and cookies. Selma (Jenni's mother) takes good care of us aswell! We won't forget our sunscreen or 4l waterbottles for sure! (Picture below: the fancy caravan park, can you find our tent?)

Our original plan was to stop working after today, but our car has been a troublemachine lately! It's a complicated story but right now its at the auto electrician and we're hoping to have it fixed sometime next week! After that we go to Brisbane for a few days, and then we'll start the huge journey back to Western Australia!

On our rare days off we've been to Childers a few times. Childers is a town which is hardly any bigger than Gayndah, but at least our bank has a branch there and the internet is a lot cheaper... It is a big drive though, so most days off we just spend at the caravan park, washing our clothes and cleaning the tent! We've been to Bundaberg two times. Bundaberg is a lot bigger than Gayndah, but we didn't see much of it (yet?), because we were busy booking our returnflights back to Europe there! We've got them now, and on the 26th of july we fly from Perth to Singapore, then we spend 4 days shopping/relaxing and on the 30th we fly back to Amsterdam! (Picture below: Berrie at work with "our" Massey Ferguson tractor)

But, before the end of july we hope to see a lot more of this big country. We're hoping to do an Outback tour, to visit Uluru and the King's Canyon. We're not sure yet if our timeschedule will allow us to do so, because we still have 1000s of kilometers to drive in the coming 2 months!

One last thing; we killed 5 mice in our tent over the last weeks! It's cruel, but they're very cruel too (eating our cheese and bread, and shitting all over the place (including our clean dishes))! Here is the proof:

All right, that was it for the moment, hopefully we'll be in Brisbane soon! They have 24h internet cafes there, so there will be no excuse for us not to update the blog with much more exciting news than this time!

See ya!

Distance travelled as of 29/05/2008: 16.500km+

Our March in Australia

2008-04-03T16:23:00.000+02:00

Here it is! This is the entry we prepared for you some days ago, now in all its glory with all the pictures:

Here we are again, apologizing to you for the late update... but oh well, at least we've found some time in our (now) busy working schedule to write a new entry on the blog.

The last time you heard from us we just "finished" working at the plumorchard. We actually thought that we would have to get a new job straight away, but just before we wanted to leave Young, Berrie got an Email from his aunt Gerla. She got in touch with far relatives from Berrie, Jennifer Ulcoq and her husband Tim from Gayndah, Queensland. They were looking for mandarinpickers and offered us two positions in their pickingteam from late March on. That came much to our surprise, but of course we accepted it with delight!

So after our stay in Young, we spent nearly a month travelling up the eastcoast of Australia. Our first stop via Bathurst was Katoomba, beautifully located in the centre of the Blue Mountains. The biggest attraction was the famous rockformation called The Three Sisters (see picture below). We were among hundreds of people (mostly asian), taking pictures and just generally being amazed by the rocks.

After that thrilling experience we couldn't wait to get to..... Sydney! Yes, we've been in Australias most popular city! We spent a full week discovering the charme and attractions it had to offer. Our caravanpark was located just 30 minutes from the city centre, in the middle of a National Park. Again we had some nightly visitors who loved to sit in our pan and crawl through our trash. Right after we put up our tent we had a close encounter with a 1,5m long Bluetongue Lizzard. We also had a brief meeting with the Funnelwebspider. It made itself a cosy home between Pauls shoes before he bravely kicked out the spider with a bit of a hysterical squeek...

Our first day in Sydney was a bit different than we thought it would be. First of all it was somehow near impossible to find a parking space in one of the suburbs (from where we took the train to the city centre). Available parking spaces in huge garages would have cost us up $40 a day! So we decided to always take the bus and the train, even though it took us one full hour to travel. Anyway, in the first days in Sydney we saw what every tourist just has to see: the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the Rocks and Darling Harbour. It was very impressive and of course we took all the obligatory pictures (one of them you can see below...) that you would expect from a visit. We spent two evenings on the ferry to suburb Manly, with magnificent views of the skyline. If you thought Sydney was breathtaking by day, you should have seen it with all the lights of the hotels and business towers. Berries pictures couldn't capture this magical sight (the camera isn't good in capturing nightviews and gets a bit shaky on a not too steady boat), but Pauls videocamera did a very good job! Our visit to the Sydney Tower was a bit similar to the one at Melbournes Rialto Towers, but if we are very honest Melbourne has the better view from the top. But what we absolutely loved was the holographic representation show of Australia, which was included with our entry to the tower. Also included was a ride in a 3-D moving seat, which "took" us through different landscapes of the country. (Picture: an impression of Sydney [with Sydney Tower in the background])

What we really liked was the Barracks Museum. It gave an impression of how live was for a convict on a ship and, after he was brought to Sydney, in the barrack house and working site. The actual house where the convicts lived is still standing and is now a nicely refurbished museum.

The Royal Botanic Gardens were quite impressive aswell, but not exactly because of the variety of plants. As we passed some huge trees we heard some squeeking and after one look up in the air we noticed thousands of flying foxes (= bats) hanging from the branches. You can see one of the flying bats on the left.

Our caravanpark organized a spotlight tour through the park. We participated and had a good time searching for all the animals you hear at night, but never really see. Thanks to our guide we saw some Ringtail- and Brushtailpossums, Bandicoots and sleeping birds. Even though we are in meantime used to having a Brushtailpossum in our tent, it was nice to see them in their natural environment.

(Picture: Paul befriending a possum)

After all we have to say that we really liked our time in Sydney, but we definitely prefer Melbourne, as it has more of a cityfeeling to it. At one point we even struggled to find a supermarket in Sydney! But still it's a pretty (and hectic) city with worldclass architecture and a whole lot of history (for australian standards...).

The next days we spent some time getting an even nicer tan! The temperatures and the nice beach next to our campsite in Newcastle allowed us to just lay in the sun and do nothing. We found some amazing shells, but at one point we couldn't search for them anymore. Stinging (but not poisonous) jellyfish were all over the beach and in the water. Some people advised us not to have contact with them. So we just stuck to flaunting our bodies on the beach (poor us, huh?)

It has also been Berries birthday! Many of you didn't forget that, and Berrie wants to thank everyone for their amazing emails, ecards, and even postcards! We spent Berries birthday around an old convict jail, with an amazing beach. For the first time in Berries life he was able to swim in a warm ocean on the 13th of March... that goes for Paul aswell (even though of course it wasn't his birthday). We got some fancy food for the evening, like vegetarian burgers. As a sidedish we had gourmet candy such as chocolate coated raisins. We loved it!

Along the eastcoast we stayed in several towns like Grafton, Ballina and Toowoomba. Not much happened in the first two towns, but that was about to change in Toowoomba. Berrie was clumsy enough to leave his bag in a park near the visitor information and only realized that he was missing something when we arrived at the caravan park 15 minutes later. Of course we raced back to get it back, but as we arrived and searched for it, we found out it was already too late! It was nowhere to be found and two stressful days followed, worrying about Berries belongings. All our pictures, Berries passport and documents were in the bag so it was a good find for the lucky new owner. We already gave up our hope and started requesting new documents, when suddenly on the third day (about 1 hour before we wanted to leave again), a staff member of the caravan park told us that someone handed in the bag at the police station!We packed our tent in a new record time and went to pick up the bag. In the end we got everything back, except for the purse which is still missing. So thanks to the person who found it and gave it to the police!

Our moods cleared up after that and we were ready to move on to Gayndah. We travelled through the beautiful Bunya Mountains (see one of the tropical rainforest-roads below) and arrived in the Orange Capital of Australia on the same day. The city is famous for its good mandarin soil and so you can just guess where we are working now and what we are picking at the moment! Yes, mandarins!

We had a great welcome to Gayndah at Tim and Jenni Ulcoqs house, where we also met their daughters Anna and Carla. We spent the whole afternoon and evening talking about relatives, work and travelling. They even invited us to have dinner with them - the BBQ was amazing!

Some days ago we started working on the orchard. The weather is pretty bad at the moment as its raining bucket loads, so we have a day off now as we can't pick the fruit when it is wet.

Distance travelled as of 29/03/08: 14800km+

A bit of a different entry this time...

2008-03-28T06:39:00.002+01:00

It's been a very long time since we last let you know about our situation, and we realized that. So we just wrote a long story about what we did over the last weeks, but the computer doesn't accept the camera and therefore we can't upload pictures!

We'll try and get it done as soon as possible, but we are working day after day now so we can't exactly tell you yet when...

We are in good health and still enjoying our journey very much though, we can imagine you're in doubt about that after such a long time!

Hopefully we'll be back soon,

Paul and Berrie

From a library in New South Wales, Australia

2008-02-27T03:37:00.005+01:00

(Picture: a row of plumtrees, after all the plums had been picked...)

It's been a while since we've let you know something about us, but here we are again! It won't be much though, as we haven't been up to much since we left Melbourne. Well, that's not true, the better way to say it is that we haven't been up to things that make interesting blog entries!

We currently stay in Young, New South Wales, where we have been picking plums for the last 1,5 week. Plumpicking is hard work, but when we stayed in Canberra and had a look at the balance on our bank account, we realized that we would need to work very soon, hard or not!

So we picked a lot of plums! But yesterday the plumpicking came to a sudden end, only 1,5 hour after we started (very early...) someone told us to stop picking and come to the end of our rows, where we were told that the plums are not good enough this year (nobody wants to buy them) and that the plumpicking would stop immediately!

We are now looking for a new job (probably picking apples, pears or oranges) somewhere not too far from Young and Sydney, because as soon as we have enough money, our first stop is going to be Australia's best-known city: Sydney.

On the way to Young we've travelled the Australian Alpine High Country, which was a special experience! It had a strange Irish/Norwegian feeling to it, which you obviously wouldn't expect in Australia! At some point we even had to stop because the road was full of brown/white cows! We stayed at several campsites through Australia's high country and absolutely loved the quietness and peace, after our stay at the not-too-amazing Melbourne campsite...

(Picture: Australian Alpine High Country)

Next on our journey was Canberra, Australia's capital! Canberra is probably different from all other capitals in the world, as the city has been designed by an American architect, so everything is planned. No unexpected little streets or cozy small town squares, but big (boring) buildings, wide streets and, above all, loads of trees which gives you the feeling you're not really in a city. The HUGE shopping center was so huge that we didn't like it (which says more than it might seem). The National Museum of Australia was, in contrast to the rest of Canberra, very interesting and very nice!

(Picture: Paul in front of the National Museum of Australia)

Looking back, we didn't really give Canberra a good chance. Even before we went there, we already knew that Canberra would be boring, as everybody said so (even the Lonely Planet hints at this), so we were not to eager to discover the city.

Anyway, another very interesting visit (after Canberra) was our visit to Cowra's Japanese Garden. Especially Paul loved it to bits, it created some kind of Asian obsession for him! Planned by a worldfamous Japanese garden architect and perfectly well maintained, the rolling gardens were very pleasing for our eyes.

(Picture: the Japanese Garden)

A similar visit was the one to Young's Chinese Tribute Garden. It's much smaller, but it looks very nice aswell.

(Picture: the Chinese Tribute Garden)

That was about it for now, we know it isn't much but it's all there is! No, it isn't. We found another piece of Europe in Australia that managed to awake emotional memories for us, we found ALDI! We've been to 3 ALDI stores now, and even bought an ALDI shopping bag to show off in all Woolworth's and Coles' we visit! This is Berrie posing with the ALDI bag:

See ya next time!

Sorry, no kilometercounter this time, we forgot to check...

Melbourne!

2008-02-03T02:24:00.000+01:00

Now, we've promised you that you will hear from us very soon, and here we are with a whole post dedicated to Melbourne! We spent over a week in the metropole and we've experienced so many things that we thought it's worth its own entry.

Last saturday, after we drove along the coast, we saw the skyline of Melbourne (see picture above) appearing slowly in front of us. The traffic was just pure madness! We were, of course, not aware of the 'special' traffic rules here, so the first thing we did was going to Starbucks to discuss our route through the city in order to reach the information center (or just be close to it!) In the city itself the traffic was even worse: the cars were driving bumper to bumper and it was somehow impossible to reach any parking garage! We did manage to get into one after some hours - but we went out after 2 minutes, because for 30 minutes we would have to pay $6,50 and for one hour $15,00! We found a garage for $8,50 a day so we parked our car there.

Well, then we gathered some information leaflets from the information centre about what's going on in Melbourne. Our next challenge was to find a decent place to stay for the coming week! We phoned with several owners of caravan parks and they all had tent sites for us! The first caravan park was called Honey Hush; beautifully located between factories, dumpyards and highways. We thought this was a bit too high profile for us, so after 5 minutes on the campsite we drove further to the next one. ' Hobsons Bay Caravan Park' looked even lovelier than the previous one! Unfortunately, no one was in the office. There was just a lovely lady, we call her Rosie, who collected the money for the tentsite. At that point we were still not sure whether to stay or to go on, but when she hissed through her black teeth that we would get the 7th night for free, we could hardly hold back our joy. Well, we ended up staying at 'Hobsons Bay Caravan Park'. Throughout the week we had some nice neighbours from Germany and from Ireland, so afterall it wasn't bad there at all!

On monday we went for a walk through the city and through the dozens of shopping malls (some of them have over 300 shops!). Our first impression of Melbourne was very good, we loved the atmosphere & city panorama a lot. But after we saw all the shops and skyscrapers from down below, we decided to take a good look at them from 250metres above! We went into the Rialto Towers and to be exact on the 360degrees observation deck high in the sky. The view was breathtaking (see picture on the left)! We could see every glimpse of Melbourne, as it was a sunny clear day. We spent about half an hour up there. The good thing about the observation deck was, though, that you could come back in the evening again to look at the city with all the lights on. Of course we took the opportunity to do so. It was even more stunning than during the day and a completely different experience (see picture below).

The next day we went to the Federation Square (Picture on the left), the heart of central Melbourne. We visited the ACMI, the Australian Center for Moving Images. There was an exhibition from Christian Marclay which was fairly interesting for us. The rest did not quite impress us either. We enjoyed watching some short movies made by students from different schools throughout the region, though. In the afternoon we took a ride on the City Circle Tram, which gave us a small impression of different sides of Melbourne. On tuesday we went to see the Fitzroy Gardens. In this big park we saw Cooks Cottage (see picture on the right: it's the home of James Cooks parents, shipped to Australia to be rebuilt in this park), a flower conservatory and a dry fountain. The use of water in this area is very restricted: the government bans all water consumptions that are not necessary.

The next attraction was the Melbourne Aquarium! It is hosting a big amount of animals living in the sea, from seadragons to clownfishes to sharks and seasnakes. We loved all the different aquariums and even some terrariums, but our favourite was the massive fish tank. Inhabited by huge stingrays, sharks, turtles and other fishes, this was truly a wonderful display. It became even more interesting when 2 divers appeared with a bucket of fish in their hands - it was lunchtime for the seacreatures (see picture above). All the different species begged for food in their own way, with a turtle coming back all the time to be pushed away because he never has enough... A spectacular sight!

In the late afternoon we paid a visit to the gigantic State Library of Victoria to research the different dollar coins from Australia: a collection is building for both of us.

Thursday was our internetday! You got your previous blogentry back then, and this took us quite some hours and nerves, thanks to blogger.com (we still love it though). We didn't do anything else this day because it rained very much.

Friday morning started with a visit to the massive Queen Victoria Central Market. Nearly everything is available there, but after a while it seems like every stall is selling the same as the previous one and that's where our attention slipped away. We also took a stroll through the delicatess department of the market. The air was filled with dozens of scents from fish to meat to herbs and cheese. In other words: it stank. Still it was a nice experience to see the lively market.

Our next (not planned) stop was the Shrine of Rememberance, which pays tribute to the Australian soldiers serving in wars throughout the past and present years. (Picture on the right: View from the top of the Shrine)

In the afternoon we went to the Botanic Gardens. We liked it much more than the one in Adelaide, and we are becoming true experts in examining all different kinds of treesand bushes.

On saturday we went to Phillip Island! This was going to be our wildlife-experience-day. Two days before we bought a 3 Parks Pass which allows us to visit a Heritage Farm, the Koala Conservation Centre and the Penguin Parade.

The Heritage farm was located on Churchill Island. We liked it very much as it had a farm and a beachside residence from a wealthy man, dating from nearly 200 years ago. The house was furnished in original style including a woman in a maitressgown (sitting just in between the furniture), who was happy to answer all of our questions. We patted some goats and horses, and that was basically all that we could do there.

(Picture: Apparently for some people these signs are necessary...)

Our next stop was the Koala Conservation Centre. A boardwalk took us on the same level as the koalas, which offered great photo opportunities. Some of them were literally just 1 meter in front of us! It was pretty hard though to spot them in the eucalypt trees.

Every single one of them looked cute, so we couldn't select the best picture. Here are the best.

Unfortunately we don't have any picture from our last - and probably the most interesting - experience of the day. In the evening we went to see the penguins! Hundreds of people were stationed in front of the beach anticipating the return of the penguins from sea. It was rather cold and it took quite long, but as soon as the first Little Penguin (as they're called) rolled on the beach in between the waves we knew it was worth the waiting. As it got late, more and more penguins appeared and it was impressive to see the clumsy creatures walking into the beach vegetation to their nests. The reason we don't have any pictures is that it was not allowed to take any. Apparently it would scare the penguins, so we were more than happy to respect this. If you're really interested, you can have a look at http://www.penguins.org.au/

Then it was time for our drive back home, 130kms away from Phillip Island. We did much bigger distances of course, but this drive was full of traffic lights, confusing lanechanges and loaded streets, even at night! We did manage to reach Melbourne, but that's also where it went wrong. If you miss one exit you're screwed! Trust us, you do not want to be lost in the chaos of Melbournes traffic at night. We were. It took quite some time to even realize where we were, and it took much longer to find a route back to Williamstown, which was worse because of the pressure of the fuelmeter (it sank below "E", which doesn't mean Extra full...). Anyway, we made it, and today we are spending our last hours in Melbourne! We have to get some things organized, do the laundry, the dishes from some days (but we can manage ourselves perfectly here), and of course pack everything again.

Tomorrow we'll continue our journey, heading for Canberra, Sydney and all interesting spots in between. We loved every minute in Melbourne and we hope the East Coast has more exciting cities in store for us to see.

See you soon!

PS. In some time you may notice a grand change in the layout of our blog. We plan to change the header as soon as we can, since we just read about the Spice Girls quitting their tour after the American leg of their tour. Which means we will not get the chance to see them live.
For us it is a big letdown, as it really would have marked the highlight of our journey. For now we lost our support and it won't come back until they decide to change their plans.

Distance travelled as of 03/02/08: 10880km

Travelling through 3 States

2008-01-31T02:31:00.000+01:00

Believe it or not, but we travelled another 5000km since our last entry!

We went from Albany to Esperance, Norseman, all the way through the Nullarbor Plain, Horsham, Adelaide and now we arrived in Melbourne four days ago! We also crossed two borders in meantime: from West Australia to South Australia, and since we're in Melbourne now, from SA to Victoria.

We've experienced and seen a lot of things, and we're going to spoil you with the highlights!

Let's start with Esperance. It was a short stay for us in the city, so the only thing we did there was the Great Ocean Drive, which was full of the nicest beaches you can possibly imagine! We spend a lot of time just swimming in the huge waves along the coast. We also spent some time to just stroll through the city and look at the stores. (Picture: Berrie in the waves)

After two days we travelled further to Norseman. We actually didn't want to spend much time there, but we read in a brochure that - only 12km out of town - you can dig for gemstones! We took the opportunity to collect numerous of beautiful stones in green, white, and red!

(Picture: Paul and a roadsign)

We then took on the most challenging drive for us so far: The Nullarbor Plain! 2000 km of desert land, sometimes plastered with the occasional bush, tree and - hundreds of dead kangaroos! We actually thought we would see dozens of kangaroos hopping along with car as we drove, but instead we got what the truckdrivers left from doing 100km per hours constantly and not caring about what is in their way. The only living animal that we saw was an Emu crossing the street right in front of us, and groups of eagles sitting alongside of the road. Berrie also spotted a living kangaroo at one point.

(Picture: a cliff along the Nullarbor drive. For a scale idea: search for our car)

We were a bit afraid of driving through the Nullarbor, as people told us it is exhausting and boring, but we really liked it! We slept in two roadhouses during the three days.

(Picture: our sight for 3 days)

At that point we crossed the border to South Australia. The first thing that we experienced there was a fruitfly control! The Nullarbor Plain is the natural border to keep diseases either out of South or Western Australia. It is not allowed to carry any fruit or vegetables with you when you enter these states. The control itself happend in pure Aussie-manner: a quick look in the trunk was enough to ensure that we are not taking flies into state. Our first stop was Ceduna, but only to get a pin that we made it through the Nullarbor and for some foodshopping.

We drove further towards our big goal Adelaide, and on the way we visited Pildappa Rock (see picture).

That wasn't going to be the main attraction, though. After we arrived at the rock, we closed all windows and locked all doors from the car to make sure no one would steal or take anything out of it.

During the two months we had the car now, it happend quite often that we forgot to take the key out of the lock. All those times we were lucky that one door wasn't locked.

This time it happened again, with one little difference: we couldn't get into the car anymore at all. And it was Berries fault... As soon as he closed the door with a confident slap, he realised he did something wrong. And we had lost our spare key earlier already... Berrie ran up the hill, asking some random tourists for help. The two ladies analyzed the situation and then took Berrie to the nearest farm, where he searched for a bit of wire on their iron pile. Back at the rock, where Paul was pushing twigs through the door, we did our best with the wire. And with the help of another tourist (Australian people are extremely helpful!) we opened the car after a stressy hour!

We didn't drive much further after this incident, and after a night at a very windy caravan park we drove to Iron Knob. This town that is built around an Iron Mine went from a population of 4000 to 150 after the closure of the mine. Now you can go up the mine with a guide to see the massive craters, and it was well worth a look. On the same day we passed Port Augusta (where we didn't do anything apart from having lunch), to arrive in Adelaide some hours later. We were confident to find a Caravan Park to spend the night, but that proved not to be that easy... After finding 4 parks completely booked out, we decided to give up our budgetaccomodation for 1 night and stayed in a Backpackers Hostel. It was good to have an actual bed underneath us after so many weeks though!

Our first impression of Adelaide was good, very good. It looked more glamourous than Perth and we had high expectations. During our 5day stay at the nicely and centrally located Levi Park we found out that it isn't TOO nice. There's not too much happening really, and apart from shopping, visiting the small but beautiful zoo, strolling through the good but not spectacular Botanic Gardens, going to Port Adelaide (with the misleading promotion slogan "Port Adelaide. Its Happening") and spending an afternoon in IKEA (a piece of European culture on the other side of the world!) we haven't seen much. (Picture: Central Market in Adelaide)

After our stay in Adelaide we wanted to drive into Victoria, but before we actually went there, we stopped at a hill with a nice view over the city, to find out that smoke was coming out of our car. We were convinced that this was the end, we already made plans for working again and being stuck in Adelaide... Two men who came by and had a look made us feel a lot better about it though. We thought the fan was broken, but it wasnt, and the smoke was just coming from a bit of oil that was outside of the engine. The engine became very hot because of the steep hill and there it was: a dramatic vision. Afterwards we didn't have any problems again, so we suppose the men were right!

(Picture: Us on the Jaws of Death. That is the actual name of this rock)

The next town was Horsham, our base for exploring the absolutely gorgeous Grampians Mountain Range. This nature reserve rises abrubtly from the rather plain and boring Victorian rural grounds, and we enjoyed it so much that we would call it one of our favourite parts of Australian nature seen so far. To mention two of the nicest spots in the Grampians: the MacKenzie Falls and Mt. William (the highest point in the region). The pictures speak for themselves!

We went on to discover yet another fantastic piece of Australian landscape. The Great Ocean Drive, stretching about 200km's west of Melbourne stunned us with their rough beauty. Travel brochures call it one of the most beautiful coastal drives in the world, and we can do nothing but admit this. Another visual impression of Australian nature:

(Picture: the 12 Apostels, along the Great Ocean Road)

And now we are in Melbourne! We hope to let you know everyhting about our Melbourne stay very soon, and we'll spoil you with just one fact for now: we love it just as much as we thought we would. It's everything Adelaide wasn't. We're currently sleeping in a brandnew tent. Our "old" one became very unsturdy and it had cuts here and there. The staff of Kmart were extremely happy to offer us a new one, and we were lucky to find that it was on discount so we actually got some money with it!

You'll hear from us again very soon!

(Pictures: Australian sunsets)

Distance travelled as of 31/01/08: 10458km

From Gunny to Albany

2008-01-11T08:30:00.000+01:00

Once again we can just say sorry for the lack of updates over the past few weeks, but here we are again, informing you on what has happend since the time around christmas!

In mean time we're not at the vinyard anymore, but before we'll tell you about all the exciting things we saw and did over the last days, we'll let you know about what happened at Gunyulgup Estate.

Before christmas we spent a weekend driving around the Margaret River region. We visited towns like Augusta, Nannup and Bridgetown. Even though (believe it or not!) it was a fairly rainy weekend, we enjoyed our trip and spent some hours in the lovely second hand shops.

We could also be found at the beach quite some times in the evenings, where we hoped to see a dramatic sunset. Even though these evenings supplied us with some nice pictures, the best sunset we saw was at the vinyard itself.

We spent christmas day all over the region, but especially on the beaches. We had, in fact, the hottest christmas in the world with +40degrees! Even though it was nice to wear nothing but swimming shorts over the christmas days, we didn't really feel the exciting december atmosphere that is all over Europe these days. On christmas eve we baked wraps, and filled them with vegetables, tofu, herbs and sauces. On top of that, we had warm cupcakes covered with vanilla custard. The time between christmas and new years eve was packed with work. On new years eve though we had a great time opening bottles of wine and champagne and eating chips & snacks and playing our recently bought game "Eternity II".

We didn't have any sort of firework in this region. The danger of starting a bushfire is just too high. So we welcomed 2008 with some sparkling sticks, sitting outside watching what seemed a thousand stars in the dark night.

During the last days at Gunyulgup, we saw two snakes crossing the street right in front of our car! They are way too fast to identify their kind or colour, though. The very last working day was on January, 4. Angie and Sjaak invited us to the Yallingup Caves House to have a nice goodbye drink under the setting sun. Our working mate Jim was there aswell, just like Sjaak and Angies daughter Saskia. (see picture below)

As a goodbye and thankyou gift they gave us a carton (!) of wine. This is the chance for us to thank our hosts for the past five weeks aswell: We had a great time and thankyou for all the advice and the hospitality!

The following weekend, especially on Sunday 6th, we packed our bags and placed all of our belonging into our Holden. At exactly noon we left "Gunny", heading towards Nannup again.

We didn't exactly get the best impression of the town last time we visited it ( it was raining bucketloads of water!), but at this point the sun was shining brightly, setting the sleepy town into a whole different light. We stopped at the Blackwood River Winery for a quick coffee and a piece of cake. We loved the food but especially the location very much. (see picture to the left)

Our next stop on the schedule was Pemberton. The town itself was, again, a bit sleepy. We stopped there to have lunch at the Big Brook Dam. It was getting pretty late and after several hours of driving we decided to call it a day. The following night we camped in the Shannon National Park, surrounded by bushes, trees and birds. We also met a couple from Switzerland on the campsite. They gave us great advice for an activity to do on the next day; they advised us to climb the 400m high Mt. Frankland. From the top of the mountain you have a beautiful 360degrees view over national parks. So the next day we packed up the tent again and headed for Mt. Frankland. We met the Swiss couple again there, and together we took on the mountain. The view on the top was indeed breathtaking...(see picture on the right). But the day had an even more breathtaking activity in store for us! Just after we went to the small town of Walpole, drove a scenic drive along the coast and visited the Giant Tingle Tree, we walked the Tree Top Walk. It might sound boring, but when you're walking 40m above the ground level, in between the massive Red Tingle Trees, which are unique to this park, you are fully aware of the power and strenght of nature (see picture on the left).

(Picture: Paul underneath the Giant Tingle Tree)

The town of Denmark was a tidy place, where Berrie got his hair cut and we visited some nice shops. Close to town are Green's Pool and the Elephant Rocks, some massive rocks in the ocean breaking the waves and offering a safe (but cold!) swimming beach.

After Denmark we went to Albany, the place where we are staying at the moment. What can we say, we absolutely love the city! It is located directly next to the ocean, has great shopping malls, lots of small but cosy shops (which create the towns nice atmosphere) and most importantly: lots of cafes. So far we had coffee at 3 different places, right now we're sitting in the Naked Bean Cafe (we rate it 5.5/10). But of course the city has more to offer than coffee. We went to see a war memorial (see picture on the right), with a magnificent view over the city of Albany and the surrounding area. Right after that we went to see the remainings of a fort from the first and second world war: Fort Princess Royal. We were highely impressed by the huge variety of things to see there: lookouts, bunkers, cannons and guns, galleries of belongings of soldiers from that time and loads more. After that we went back to our current campsite, Cosy Corner Beach. Situated right next to the beach, the waves are the last thing that we hear in the evening and the first thing to hear in the morning.

Yesterday we went to visit Whaleworld, 20km from Albany. This attraction features remainings from a cruel time in the history of Australia. Whales were shot by huge harpoons with grenades on them, and dragged into this whaling station. Flenchers cut off the blubber (fat), then the flesh, and then put everything into a huge cooker to produce the multifunctional whale oil. The oil was basically used for any product made during the 60's and 70's. We went on a whaling ship, saw a 3D movie, movies about whaling and sharks and took part in the very interesting guided tour through the complex. The whale skeletons impressed us (see picture below).

After a good 2 hours we went on to see a few more attractions, just a stonethrow away from Whaleworld. We saw "blowholes", if you're lucky (and the waves are strong) the water crashes into holes in the rocks and create a unique sound and sight. Unfortunately we were not amongst the people to experience that... We just saw a crack in the rock. The most amazing attractions though, were the Gap and the Natural Bridge. They were both sculptures of ocean rocks and even though we were disturbed by a huge, noisy crowd of French tourists, we enjoyed to see the formations. (Picture below: Berrie standing close to the Natural Bridge)

This very afternoon we got our new CD/MP3 player installed in our car! It is AMAZING! Kylie was the first to blast through the stereo.

That was it for now. See ya!

Distance travelled as of 11/01/2008: 5765km

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T07:27:00.000+01:00

We wish everyone at home a Merry Christmas !

Enjoy the festive days with the family, a good & rich dinner and many presents underneath the christmas tree!

Currently it is close to 40 degrees in Australia, so it is most likely that we are going to spend christmas at the beach this year! One thing is for sure - we won't have a white christmas.

We think of our families and friends at home.

We also want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Start those rockets and crackers, because we won't be able to do so! It is absolutely forbidden to have any kind of firework due to the risk of a bushfire. So the festive season will be completely different for us this year!

We'll leave you with two new pictures of us, we thought they have a little bit of a christmas atmosphere to it...

Heading Down South!

2007-12-15T03:34:00.000+01:00

We know it's been almost three weeks since our last entry, but one you start reading about our busy schedule, you'll find out that we merely had any time to update our blog!

Let's start with the day we left Swan Valley and Herne Hill. We had quite mixed feelings about it. On one side we left the save shelter we had for one month, on the other side we were excited about going away to see and experience new things. The hardest thing though was saying goodbye to the Geversfamily. They took great care of us and gave us the best start we could possibly have in Australia. We also had to say bye-bye to all of our new friends at the Black Swan. After many hugs and a promise that we'll visit them again next year, they let us go.

(Picture: Berrie and Paul in Rockingham)

Our car fully packed up to the roof, the first stop on our long but not too far journey was Rockingham, on the Scenic Ocean Drive along the coast to be specific. There was nothing major to it. We stopped at one beach to relax and stretch our bodies and enjoy the sun. After some hours of driving and taking several wrong roads and turns, we reached Mandurah. It was a nice city with a beautiful town centre. We didn't spend too much time there though, because most of the shops started to close down. It was getting pretty late so we started looking for a place to stay for the coming nights. We ended up setting up our tent on a camping area called Honeymoon Pool, which was located in the Wellington National Park. (See picture below) (Picture on the right: this reptile [about half a meter long] crossed the street in front of our car...)

We absolutely loved the place. We camped in between bushes, trees, animals and near the Collie River. The first night sleeping in a tent was a bit rough, but we managed to get some sleep at last.

The next day we went to visit Bunbury. It was one of our most favourite places to visit so far. At first we went into the Shopping Centre, followed by a lookout point with a beautiful view over the whole city. The city beach offered some great rock formations, which were originated out of lava. The huge waves and the rough sea gave us a spectacular sight. (Picture: Bunbury lookout)

(Picture: camping!)

We packed our stuff on the third day of camping. We decided it was time to go on to the next cities and areas of Australia. Since our campsite was located at Collie River, we went to see the town Collie itself. It turned out to be a rather sleepy town unfortunately. Except for a little shopping street, Collie didn't offer many things to see. (Picture: a last (night) impression of camping at Honeymoon Pool)

Neither did the cities we went to afterwards on our way to Busselton: Donnybrook and Capel. Even the lady at the tourist information centre in Donnybrook told us that there's pretty much nothing to do in this town. By the time we were on the road for three days now. Facing that, we were more than happy to discover a little lake on the way. We swam for a few minutes in the water, and as you can see on the picture on the right, Berrie enjoyed it very much.

Our next stop was in Busselton. We didn't have too much time left on that day, so instead of looking around in Busselton we went on to Dunsborough and then to Yallingup to find a place to stay. We soon found Sjaak de Jong's vinyard; Gunyulgup Estate. It was the next place we wanted to work. Our car just managed to drive over the gravel road on this huge property, but strangely there was no one to be found. We couldn't even find someone in the cottage belonging to the vinyard. Just as we decided to look for a campsite, we saw a man on a motorbike waiting outside the gate. It was Sjaak himself, wondering who passes the "Authorised Personnell Only"-sign. We explained our situation and he was more than willing to offer us a place for our tent on his vinyard. The same evening he introduced us to his wife Angie and his daughter Saskia. Angie and Sjaak welcomed us with open arms and even invited us to have pizza together on the first night.

But the next day we already started working! Not on the vinyard though: we carried kilos and kilos of soil around Sjaak and Angies house, decobwebbed the verandah and cleaned all of their windows. Did we mention that their house is rather big? It was quite some tough work, but we managed to do some things around their house. The next day we started working on the vinyard, which kept us busy on all of the weekdays since then.

Our working list goes from cleaning vines and trunks to wirelifting, nailclipping and mowing. That's by far not all of it, but it would just get too detailed. Just believe us when we say that it's pretty hard work. We both didn't do any manual labour, so it was quite a change. And oh oh oh... how much do we hate the alarm every morning at 6.30! On the vinyard we use three different vehicles to move around; a Kawasaki motorbike, a very old "ute" (Toyota Landcruiser) and a quad. Sjaak showed us how to handle all of these machines and we love driving them in mean time!

We also had to move our tent from the top of the hill to a more sheltered place close to the shed, as the wind did a pretty good job blowing all of our belongings including the tent itself through each other... Yes, we completely live in our tent now. No TV, no electricity, no computer. But we did want some entertainment for after work, so we bought the Australian version of Monopoly. After work we love to go to one of the breathtaking, lonely beaches (see picture below) in this area, and the ocean is also a nice substitute for a shower. Because even though we do have water here, having a shower is a bit hard with only having a waterboiler and a small bowl.

Angie and Sjaak are incredibly warm people; we've been at their place a couple of times now to enjoy their "barbies" (barbecues). Their sweet dalmatian dog Peeko loves us aswell, thanks to a big bag of Doggy Reward Treats. Angie gives us amazing advices about what to do in this region.

In our weekends, we've been to Ngilgi Cave (see picture below), discovered over a 100 years ago and the first cave in Australia to be open to the public. We walked down the stairs to a level of 32 meters below the surface and loved the spectacular formations of stalagmites, stalactites and shawls.

We visited Busselton quite recently, and were a bit disappointed. Except for a little secondhand market and our new lunchaddiction called Dome Cafe, there was nothing to see. The day we went there brightened up by our visit to Quindalup Fauna Park! We were the only visitors and got to talk to cockatoos, had exotic birds landing on our shoulders and backs, patted adult kangaroos (proof is on the pictures!) and fed the baby kangaroos! To be honest, we didn't expect much of it after seeing the empty parking space in front of the entrance, but it turned out to be something we wouldn't have liked to miss out on.

We also went to visit Margaret River. On the way there we stopped at a Chocolate-, a Cheese-, a Candy- and a Regional Product-Factory at a Winery. Tasting was possible at those places and so we did! We got a ridiculously big piece of chocolate mixed with marshmellows, nuts and fruit next to the most delicious coffee at the Chocolate Factory, which was our favourite tasting of the day. We also got to taste different Olive Oils, jams, spreads, smoked cheeses and all kinds of fudge you can imagine. "Yumm!!!", as the Australians would say. (Picture below: the Regional Product Factory)

Next on our to do-list is a whalewatching tour! We hope we made it clear now that we haven't been lazy for a minute over the last weeks. Time flies in Australia, but we make sure to enjoy every moment of it. Our plan is to keep working for a few more weeks and then we want to travel a huge distance all the way to Melbourne. For that trip we're going to take our time though, because we want to see as much of Australia as possible. As usual you're going to be able to join the fun on AussieUpdate! See ya!

(Picture: Margaret River beach)

NEW FEATURE! KILOMETERCOUNTER! From now on we'll let you know how many kilometers we drove in the Holden Apollo!

Distance travelled as of 15/12/2007: 3089km

Bye Bye, Swan Valley!

2007-11-23T02:38:00.000+01:00

We know that you expect a long update from us now, but even though it's been so many days, we haven't been up to much. Actually, 80% of the time we spent working in the Black Swan. But before you start feeling sorry for us: we had our last day at work last wednesday.

(Picture: Us after the last day of work)

Yes, we had our last day at work. We are planning to leave Swan Valley and the area around Perth this weekend to head off to the south of Australia. Even though our boss tried to make us stay longer by offering a raise of our payment, we feel like it is time to move on and see new places and cities in Australia. But don't expect us to stay in fancy youth hostels, we're going to do it rough and wild: we are going to camp. We already bought a 4-person tent (just to have some comfort at least) and this weekend we are off to our new favourite shopping center in Morley to get the rest of our equipment, like a stove or plates and a lamp.

But surely we did not only work the last weeks, we had some days off to do some outdoor activities.

(Picture: Perth City and the Botanic Garden)

On two days, we decided to go back to Perth to make sure we really saw the major attractions and sights the city has to offer. We went on a CAT, which is a free bus service, taking people around the city, to go to places like the Botanic Garden, Swan Bells, Chinatown in Northbridge and Kings Park. Not to forget the huge shopping area just opposite the train station.

(Picture: Us in front of the temporarily Perth/Hollywood-letters)

Another day we followed a misleading sign which had "Bassendean Town Center" written on it. Naive us thought of a fancy shopping mile, but instead we got around 20 real estate agencies, 3 book shops and a second-hand clothes shop. As you can imagine, our excitement level was rather low.
We also went to the Whiteman Park. It is full of attractions like a Wildlife Park or a Lollyshop, but we got there way too late, so basically everything was closed. We still had a nice time sitting in the huge, empty park with its old gigantic trees and mysterious ponds.

One day we tried to find some things to see close to our home, but all we could find was a playing ground, which Berrie seemed to enjoy very much. (See picture on the left)

Our most dangerous trip took us back to Bells Rapids, a nature park we went to see some weeks ago. This time we decided to swim in there, as the low waterlevel and the slowflowing river allowed us to enjoy the clear water. Adventurous us searched for a seemingly quiet place to swim to the other side. It went fine for Paul, but Berrie did have some difficulties reaching the other side. He felt some repulsing things in between his fingers and gave an Oscarworthy panic attack. Struggling for his life, he finally reached the lifesaving stones on the other side. Both shaking from this dramatic situation, we went back to grab our clothes and go back home. In the end it wasn't all that dramatic, as the repulsing things were just some plants floating in the water.

Another possibly dramatic situation you can experience here: going to the toilet at night and facing this right in front of you. It was the third time we saw a Huntsman in real life! And yes, we took the picture ourselves and no, the picture does not do justice to the actual size of the spider.

That was it for now from us and from Swan Valley. Next time we'll update the blog, you will get some pictures of new areas and cities in the beautiful south of Australia.

Us & The Apollo

2007-11-02T11:26:00.000+01:00

OK, time for an update! We've been busy working last week, but we've also managed to drive to some places around this area.

Yes, we drove there with our car. We're having it for a week now, and we haven't been on our bikes ever since. We fall in love again and again, each time we see it. So far, we drove around 500km. We had some critical moments when it came to driving on the left side, but it's all fine now and we love driving here. Last week we played a driving game on the Playstation 2 and immediately caused an accident, because we started driving on the left! We really got into it now we guess... (Pictures left & below: our very own Holden Apollo SLX '93)

One of our first trips with our car took us to Midland Gate Ace Cinema! Yes, even though we should spend our time doing real Australian things like playing the didgeridoo or watching kangaroos, we like to spend our evenings in airconditioned, well seated, thick carpeted and dark cinemas! We went to see Resident Evil III, which we both liked a lot. And yes, it's in European cinemas too!

Walyunga National Park! That's the name of the first National Park we've seen in Australia. Our expectations were high and our raincoats were packed. It was indeed very nice but we hope to see more spectacular landscapes later in other National Parks. We took a walk along Swan River and walked Syd's Trail, a 2,5 km path up and down the river.

(Picture: an impression of Walyunga National Park)

Our first long trip took us to a place called Hillarys, a beautiful city on the westcoast of Australia. We first went to a beach and even though the sun was shining brightly, the wind was a bit cold so we decided not to go swimming. There were some nice colourful tiny little shells though, and the little box below our handbrake looks like a miniature beach now! Later that afternoon we went to Sorrento Quay Center, a nice shopping/eating/kitsch/boats/water combination in Hillarys. We had our coffee at Gloria Jeans (which is by the way our new favourite brand, Muffin Break is so yesterday!). Afterwards we went to another, more natural beach near Hillarys. (Picture: Paul enjoying Gloria Jeans and Berrie in front of Sorrento Quay)

(Picture: one of the beaches we went to see)

The day after reality hit us in the face again as we went back to work. We made a huge blooper at work some days ago. We had to start at 9.00am. Right. We set the alarm at 7.30am to be sure that we would be on time. Nothing wrong so far. But! The alarm didn't ring! Luckily, Paul woke up at 8.30, waking Berrie immediately with just the words "It's 8.30!". We hurried our arses off to be on time and indeed, we were at work just before 9! We were finishing our breakfast on the walk from our car to the Black Swan Restaurant, and entered the building totally confident and proud. We were all cool saying "Hi guys! How are you doinggg?" to our collegues. Then there was Kathryn, a loud but very cheery and nice cook, who came to us, accusing us for being late! "It is 10am guys! And I'm not joking! You're late!" Confused us. She then explained to us that due to Daylight Saving Time the clocks were set one hour ahead last night. So, it wasn't 9.00am as we thought, it was 10 already! We really were late! No one was mad at us though and one (native!) cook did the same. After work we made sure all our clocks were set 1 hour ahead. (Picture: Black Swan Restaurant seen from the back)

One day we climbed over a closed fence somewhere in the hills surrounding Perth, and walked up the hills. It was extremely steep but the views were very nice. We saw the skyline of Perth in the distance, but unfortunately the camera didn't capture this. It did capture our faces though. Just imagine you see Perth Skyline somewhere behind us! We saw kangaroos hopping and stomping (they really are loud!) around us, which was nice and so close to where we actually live here!

We had one more big trip, which was yesterday. We drove into the Darling Range (the hills around Perth) and went to Mandurin, Mandurin Weir (the drinking water supplier for a huge area) and Kalamunda (a very neat and relaxed town with an idyllic shopping center). On the way back we did the scenic one way zig zag drive down the hills. We could've taken the most amazing pictures BUT we did not have our camera with us. Sorry mates, we'll spare you more details because we can't show you anyway. Believe us, it was a breathtaking view.

Some days ago we embarrassed ourselves in Sanity, the local CD store. We were out to buy Britney's new CD (which is amazing!) but then Pauls eye fell on (!) the cover of the Spice Girls Greatest Hits! He shouted Berries name and together we hurried to the desk, grabbing the CD case to find out that it was only a promotional item, stating it'll be out November 10. The shopkeepers gave us amused looks, and told us we should pre order a copy as "this one's gonna be huge". We couldn't help smiling.

That's about what we've done during the last days. Tomorrow we'll be working even harder than usually as we're having a wedding during the day and the restaurant will be open for dinner in the evening again. That means starting at 9.00am, having a little break in the afternoon and working again until the last guest leaves the restaurant and maybe even later. We expect to be home at 11.00pm.

Right, one of our sources at home told us that many of our readers would like to leave a comment for us but don't know how to do this. Understand us well, we don't complain about the big response we already get but we do want to give everyone the chance to share in this amazing experience. We'll explain it in English, German and Dutch.

English:
1. Click on "... Comments"
2. Write your comment in the box on the right.
3. You don't need to sign up, just tick the "Anonymous" box as your identity.
4. Click on "Publish your comment"

Deutsch:
1. Klick auf "... Kommentare" ("... Comments")
2. Schreibe deinen Kommentar in die Box auf der rechten Seite.
3. Du brauchst dich nicht anzumelden, klicke auf "Anonym" ("Anonymous") als Identitaet.
4. Klicke auf "Veroeffentliche Kommentar" ("Publish your comment").

Nederlands:
1. Klik op "... Comments" of "... reacties"
2. Schrijf je reactie in het veld dat nu rechts in beeld verschijnt.
3. Je hoeft je nergens voor aan te melden, klik op "Anonymous" of "Anoniem" als identiteit.
4. Klik op "Publish your comment"

Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)

2007-10-25T05:19:00.000+02:00

Ok, we are just going to ignore that is has been 11 days since our last blogentry... We have been very busy though!

Let's start with "Spring in the Valley". As we've told you in our last entry, we went to see more wineries in Swan Valley. We were such an attraction on our bikes! People couldn't believe their eyes. The owners of the wineries were hugely disappointed, mainly because we couldn't carry any mass load of wine on our mountain bikes. We liked most of the wines, but our true favourite is 8 year old portwine! It comes with a sweet taste, a tempting smell and a deep brickred colour. We talked to a lot of people, the old lady from Entopia Wines thought it was 'neat to have us at their winery'. We spent the sunday evening at the neighbours' house, enjoying a great variety of XXL pizza's and the fantastic hospitality of Ruth and Tony (Josh' parents). (Pictures: impressions of Spring in the Valley)

(Picture: Berrie at Bells Rapid)

The day after "Spring in the Valley" Paula took us to Bells Rapid, a beautiful piece of country just 15 minutes from here! A flowing river, blooming flowers, bloody annoying flies surrounding our mouths and noses and a bright sun warming our topless bodies made our afternoon very enjoyable. We crossed the river in our undies and climbed the rocks with the danger of drowning any minute in the wild water of Upper Swan River. We spent 1,5 hours there, until Paula picked us up again. She showed us the area of Swan Valley, and took us to its most luxurious resort full of huge villas AND we saw our first kangaroos there!

(Picture: Us and the selftimer at Bells Rapid)

During last week we wanted to go to Guildford, but on the first day we tried to get there we didn't manage to find it! On the second day, after miles and miles of cycling next to the highway we did find it! We went to the tourist information and the woman there gave us a map with 3 cycling routes through Guildford, which we all finished within 10 minutes. We ended up in Midland Gate shopping center once again. Yes, Guildford was very exciting. In the evening we cooked for our guest family. They enjoyed the vegetarian meal very much, at least they said they did...

We also managed to set up a bank account last week at Commonwealth bank! Their staff was very friendly; full of jokes and nice comments about Dutchmen (especially about their performance in bed: "Dutch men are good lovers!"). One of our trips to Midland ended up in Henry's Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant which Henk advised us to go to for dinner. And indeed, the food was very nice and not too expensive (we could write the Lonely Planet part for this area in mean time!). But we didn't realize that the dark night sets in so quick in Australia. We had dinner when it was bright outside, and just half an hour later it was dark, and that means very dark, pitch black dark. Remember, we went to Midland on our bikes, with only one having just a front light. So, as you can imagine, we were not too keen on getting back on the highway without any lights. We ended up cycling through the darkness, taking a new route to get home. Every time we heard a car approaching we got off the road, praying it would see us and we would still stand there after it passed us.

Last friday we went to Fremantle, a nice city on the coast of WA. We went to see the Shipwreck Museum with the wreck of the Batavia in it, and took a walk through the old town centre and had a nice lunch at Mill Bakery. Before we went home, we had an icecream and took a walk on the beach to get on the train again afterwards. New disaster! Berries bike had a flat tire! Which meant he couldn't cycle the 8 kilometers back from Midland Station! Drama! But since the Aussies are so nice, they didn't hesitate to take Berrie AND the bike on a bus to Herne Hill. Poor Paul had to cycle all the way back on his own, while Berrie enjoyed the comfort of being driven home for free ("That's alright mate, free this time!"). Well, we both found our way back home and the next day we learnt how to fix a tire four times (we kept on finding leaks!).

OK, we had a major change of our stay in Australia. We intended to be in Yallingup by this time, to work on a winery for Sjaak de Jong, which Jeffry and Bianca (friends in Holland) arranged for us. But, it didn't seem to work out. Since we had no car at this point it was impossible for us to live there as the distances to everything we need are too far to do on our bikes. We talked about the situation with Henk Jan and Paula and they offered us to stay here and look for work, which we did last saturday. Within an hour we found work in a very decent place. We now work in the restaurant of Black Swan Winery, being paid $18,- an hour each! Since that saturday we almost worked nonstop, trying to make as much money as we can (our new bankaccount loves us now already!). (Picture: Berrie ironing his shirt for work)

CAR CAR CAR! You won't believe it! Our very own car is very close to us now! This afternoon we're going to pick up our Holden Apollo (which is just a Toyota Camry with a Holden badge on it) with Henk Jan! Last monday Henk took us to Auto Europe to check it out, and we are in love! It's huge, it's white, it's automatic, it's from '93 and it'll be OUR car! Next time you'll be able to take a look at our car, if we survive driving on the left side of the road...

On the same day we had a major foodshopping trip! We spent nearly $100,- on canned food and coke. We are now completely living on our own in the cottage, making our own dinner and having breakfast together.

And finally, to close this entry, we would like to gossip about the new, amazing, stunning, timeless, beautiful, classic Spice Girls single "Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)". If you're not interested, this is where the entry ends for you. Scroll down and comment now. Thank you.

ISN'T IT AMAZING?! We heard it for the first time this morning, and are absolutely amazed by it. Our favourite Spice Girls have leading parts in the song and, well, what can we say, it's so Spice Girls! It's more than we expected it to be. We are currently on our 779234th listen and we love it more and more! Maybe you wondered why the Spice Girls are in the banner of this blog (or maybe not), but we still want to go to see the Spice Girls on tour in Sydney. But they keep on adding dates in the UK and USA, so we still don't know when the Sydney date will be. Oh well, enough about the Spice Girls (we love them and their new single).

It's getting a bit too warm in here now, we'll wait outside until Henk comes back from work to take us to our car which has airconditioning by the way. We promise you won't have to wait that long for the next entry. Greetings to everyone at home in Europe who is reading this! We think of you a lot.

(PS. Ik wil heel graag iedereen die iets in het boek heeft geschreven op mijn afscheidsfeest heel erg bedanken! Het was heel fijn om de berichtjes te lezen, en hartverwarmend om te vernemen dat sommige mensen me echt gaan missen! Bedankt! Berrie)

Where to start...

2007-10-14T05:02:00.000+02:00

(Picture: Henk Jan and Paula's house)

Even though it's only been a few days since our last update, those days are starting to feel like a right blur already! We've been up to quite some things and will try to stay a bit structural during the following lines!

We've been to Perth!
Josh picked us up the day right after he told us he would, and he took us to the University of Western Australia first. We walked the campus and were stunned by the way it looked. We felt like we were in a zoo, surrounded by exotic gardens, colourful birds and little ponds. Then we went back to Josh' car where his girlfriend, Renee, was waiting for us already. They were both very nice and first took us to China Town, where we had dinner in the Vietnamesian (?) restaurant Saigon. The waitresses sucked, they didn't bother where they dropped our plates as long as they were on the correct table. After this we went to King's Park, with a panoramic view over Perth. (Picture: Josh and Renee)

Us and Perth Skyline

The same afternoon we lived a historical moment: we did our first Aussie shopping trip on our own at Woolworth's (even though we only got chips and coke).

The day after we had a look at Henk Jans work. He is making antennas. It looked well confusing but he explained it very nicely and gave us a good impression of how Aussie people work. The following night made us realize exactly where we are: in a country full of big ass motherf*cking spiders! At the top of our bed, in the corner, t here was a Huntsman spider watching us with his horrible eight eyes and clicking his megajaw. Ok, one guess who caught it! Wrong! It was Berrie! Paul stood there with shaky knees but Berrie got a beer jug and placed it right over the spider, moving it to the table, closed safely with the heavy Lonely Planet on top of it.

In mean time we've been to Midland Shopping Gate twice. It's a huge mall with over 120 stores where we already have our favourite lunchroom (Muffin Break). Other i nteresting purchases: an Aeroguard anti-insect roll-on thing, a huuuuge bottle of sunlotion (it IS hot here! Here it is) anddddd Jennifer Lopez latest effort on singing - Brave (Paul wants to point out very clearly that it was Berrie who bought this)! (Picture: Berrie at Muffin Break)

This weekend we're experiencing a traditional and local fest: Spring in the Valley. It's a two day celebration of the wineries, and you can hop on and off busses from winery to winery to taste different wines. We've been filling our glasses quite a lot, and finished the first day of it with a nice barbecue at Josh' parents place. Today we'll enjoy some more exclusive wines (a bottle costs $20.-). (Picture: Spring in the Valley at Windy Creek winery)

Now we're off to lay in the garden, enjoying the sun. We hope the weather's nice in Europe aswell. See ya mates!

The garden. Jealous? Oh and the yellow cottage is the place where we live.

Tennisballs, Dogtoys, the locals and Premium Pilsener

2007-10-10T15:51:00.000+02:00

We made it!

The stay at the Singapore Airport was interesting in many different ways. Starting with posh and exclusive fancy designer stores with no customers at all and three shopkeepers to an old dutch woman who totally fascinated by a high-tech asian invention. It was a projection of loads of tennisballs on the floor, and when you stepped on them, they were moving! WOW! She kept on pushing us to give it a try and she was all happy when we finally did it. To excuse her enthusiasm, she cried out loud: "Everyone loves doing this!" Even tho nobody else seemed to care.... Well we didnt do anything else apart from walking through the airport. We expected some exotic plants and colours, and no - they did not disappoint us at all! (Picture: Berrie discovering the lavish jungle of Singapore Airport)

Well after half an hour of checking the airport and refreshing in the toilets, we sat down on luxurious leather couches surrounded by oase-ish plants. We loved the clean airport, but one woman just took it too far. She was cleaning the carpet (always with a smily face of course), even when there was no dirt! Amazing! Oh well, the boarding went very well up until the point, where we had to fill out a dramatic declaration form that we are not importing something dangerous! But Berrie freaked out because of a few questions as he carried hiking shoes (including soil(with potential diseases)) and animal equipment (dog toys), which were (according to the declaration thing) not allowed to be brought to Australia. The flight itself then went very well. It took another 5 hours. In the end, all the drama about the hiking shoes and toys were for nothing, because the things went through the scan without a problem and we only got asked who was the owner of some very dangerous chocolate balls. We soon then found Henk Jan in the waiting crowd. Well we then carried our luggage onto his Pick-up car and drove on the left side to Gevers mansion.

Even though we felt exhausted we were overwhelmed by new impressions: Australia smells different, Australia looks different, Australia feels different - Australia is different! But in a good way! The place where Henk Jan, Paula, Jonathan, Annelies and their 3 dogs live is amazing, and we even have our own, little separate cottage! Henk Jan guaranteed us we don't have to worry about spiders, yet we still had a hard time closing the curtains in the evening: potential spider places everywhere. We experienced Henk Jans amazing cooking skills when we had dinner, but it was hard to keep our eyes opened much longer so we went to bed pretty early. 17 hours of sleep followed! Yes, seventeen that is. Afterwards we heard Jonathan had been waiting all day and even rang his mum to ask whether he should wake us; he wanted to do something with us. (Picture: Paul in the garden of Henk Jans house)

The day was pretty much over by now, we had our nice little Spice Girl posing time on the trampoline and took a little walk around the place, it was then when we met Josh. He's living in the same street and offered to drive us through Perth and show all the nice places later on, which we'd love to obviously! After we came back from the walk we had dinner, watched some TV and had some german beer. Paul felt like home drinking the best imported Pilsener that you can get in Australia. At least the label said so. But indeed it was very good. We also had a nice chat with the family and then decided to update the blog for everyone at home. Now everyone went to bed (it's nearly 11pm) and we're still sitting at the computer. (Picture: An impression of the scenery, taken during our walk)

We hope you did get a nice impression of our first day, we enjoyed the first hours down-under very much. We are going to bed now, too, Bye Bye!

Singapore!

2007-10-09T00:38:00.000+02:00

We are in Singapore!! After ... countless hours of flying with amazing Singapur Airlines, we finally put our feet on asian ground. We are exhausted, but happy of course at the same time.
We had a pleasant flight with nice meals and a great crew. There were no problems during the flight, everything went well. Now we've got two hours before our next plane flies us directly to Perth. Until then - Bye Bye!

*****

Wir sind in Singapur! Nach unzaehligen Stunden Fliegens mit der super Singapur Airline betraten wir vor ein paar Minuten asiatischen Boden. Wir sind erschoepft, aber auch gluecklich das es erstmal vorbei ist. Der Flug an sich verlief ohne Probleme, das Essen und die Crew waren sehr gut. Der naechste Flug nach Perth geht in zwei Stunden. Bis dahin - Tschuess!

*****

We zijn in Singapore! Hoera! Na zo het leek ontelbare uren in het vliegtuig met de royaltywaardige Singapore Airlines staan we nu sinds een paar minuten voor het eerst in onze prille leventjes op Aziatische grond! De landing ging gepaard met jengelige pingelmuziek, wat toch niet kon verhullen dat we totaal uitgeput zijn inmiddels maar ook blij dat het achter de rug is. De vlucht ging helemaal goed, zonder problemen, we hebben lekker spicy Indiaas gegeten aan boord en de crew in kimono's deed het goed. Over twee uurtjes moeten we weer paraat staan bij de volgende gate om dan in 1 keer naar Perth te vliegen! Wij gaan ons even wentelen tussen de orchideen en palmen hier, tot dan - Bye bye!

October 8!

2007-09-10T22:25:00.001+02:00

On October 8, Paul Petermann and Berrie van der Molen will start the journey of their lifes! The German/Dutch couple's going to spend 9 months in Australia, working to fund their journey, travelling to see all the amazing things Australia has to offer and... hopefully to see the Spice Girls perform in Sydney during their Reunion World Tour!

We will update our profile very soon, telling you everything about our plans!

For now, we're leaving you with the Dutch AussieUpdate promotion card, which Berrie will hand out to his guests on his goodbyeparty!

You'll hear from us in no time, watch this space and please join us on our lifechanging journey!

Paul & Berrie