From a library in New South Wales, Australia

(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...