Still In Gayndah...

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

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...

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

(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!

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

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

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