Swan Valley - Indulgence pur... well, almost

Dear beloved food, wine and beer lovers,
On Sunday I grabbed the Saab in the morning to finally set off to the Swan Valley (actually I already wanted to go on Friday but then I had to draw up a Plan B with the Crown Casino and the City of Perth instead).

After a short stop to the Visitor Information Center in Guildford I set off to the award-winning Swan Valley Food and Wine Trail up West Swan Road.

Gawler - Volunteer ranger at Para Wirra

Howdy partners,
Today I got up in time to be ready to be picked up by a South Australian National Wildlife Park Ranger! If that doesn't sound cool I don't know what does :-) Meryl is a friend of Heidi and offered me last week that I could come along with her for a day. So we drove to the Para Wirra Recreation Park in the Southeast of Gawler. She is one of two rangers there for six weeks now. So Meryl herself has to get used to the park. Para Wirra comes from an Aboriginal phrase meaning "river with scrub".

Great Ocean Road - Flat tire and sunset at the 12 Apostles

Hallihallo everyone,

At 6am on Thursday morning we got up for our next adventure: a two-day-tour to the Great Ocean Road! This is the only tour that we found that takes more than one day to explore the Great Ocean Road and as it was designed for backpackers we should note take our luggage with us. We got picked up at 7:40am together with 19 other people, so we were 21 travelers and our tour guide Jude. Not everyone looked like a backpacker though.

Kings Canyon - Hard and easy walk

Hi,
I am not a morning person at all and getting up at 3am (this time really exists??? Aussies call this stupid hour) certainly makes me grumpy. But we were determined to not miss our coach at 4am which will get us to Kings Canyon. After a three-hour-drive where I slept a bit more we reached Kings Canyon Station where we ate some breakfast before we headed to Kings Canyon itself.
The two guides would each guide a group of people but down two different tracks. The Rim Walk is the far more difficult one with a length of 6km and having to climb 500 natural steps to the top of the 160m high Canyon. This is considered a difficult walk, exposed to the sun most of the time and not suitable for unfit people. You also have to carry at least 3 liters of water with you which the guide checked before you had to sign a waiver and could join the tour. The other Creek Bed Walk is a lot easier, you stay in the canyon and it is only 2.6km long. I did not feel too well and decided to do the easy walk together with nine other people whereas Markus went up the Rim Walk with the other 26 folks.

Port Macquarie - Pating koalas and feeding kangaroos :-)

G’Day, How is it going?

We made our way to Port Macquarie because of the Koala and Wildife Park – Billabong Zoo!

Although it rained a little bit, we strolled around and attended all the animal presentations in the morning. Starting with the penguins, then the koalas (unfortunately it is forbidden by law to hold a koala in New South Wales if you are not a caretaker but we were allowed to pat one), the snow leopards (they were just lying around) and at last the crocodile.