Kakadu - Maguk waterholes and Aborigine rock art

Dear swimming and rock art fans,
On Wednesday morning we drove with Katherine, Shaun and Phil at 7:45am towards Maguk, a place in the Southern part of the Kakadu National Park and again only accessible via a dirt road where 4WD should be engaged. We arrived at 8:30am and then took on the hike through some monsoon forest.

Coral Bay - Drifting off in the current

Heyho reef lovers,
Everyone knows about the Great Barrier Reef on the East Coast of Australia. But nobody ever told me about a big reef system on the West Coast called Ningaloo. I was very surprised during my research before this tour to find out about it. Surely it is not as big as you could see it from space but everybody here was raving over it.
Anyway, as we drove the last 100km to Coral Bay from our free camping overnight stay we bought some snorkel equipment there. After lunch we headed onto the really nice beach and took some pictures with Charlotte's underwatercamera.

Cervantes - Sandboarding, lobsters and the pinnacles at night

Alrighty mates,
On Sunday morning Christine and I got onto a bus and a train into the city center of Perth together with Maria and Erin (I know them from the Southwest tour and we have been surfing and to a Australian Rules Football game together). We picked up a rental car and after all the paperwork took off towards the North at about 9:45am.

Our first stop after an 1.5-hour drive was Lancelin where we hired two sandboards and then got into the sand dunes.

Southwest - Albany, rock formations, Tree Top Walk and find the big tree

Hallihallo friends and strangers,

You cannot possibly imagine how cold and tired and miserable I was when we had to get up at 5am again on Thursday morning. This time we had to pack our swags, tents and stuff away before we could have breakfast. Nearly on time at 8:10am we sat off towards Albany, the first settlement of Western Australia. On the way there Damian suddenly started to break and as I looked to the front of the bus I saw a fairly big kangaroo jumping across the road quite leisurely from right to left.

Southwest - Sunrise, hiking and night activities

Cheerio folks,

The other group had to leave at 7am to get all their visits done and to reach their next destination. As we used some of theircamping equipment we had to get up with them. I couldn’t sleep any longer than 5:45am, so I got up to take some pictures of the sunrise at Lucky Bay. And I finally got a picture of a jumping kangaroo! The sunrise was quite nice, so I didn’t regret getting up so early.

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".

Kangaroo Island - Seals, sand-boarding and wild animals

Howdy partners,

The next morning we got up at 8am and had to rearrange our luggage so we would not have to shift everything around to find our belongings. Anyway, we made it to the Visitor Information Center of Penneshaw at 9:30am and got lots of information about camping grounds, opening times of attractions and some useful tipps about the island. Then we drove to the first attraction of the day: Seal Bay! This is a bay on the South coast of the island where the endangered species of Australian Sea Lions rest after their three-day hunt and also breed. We decided for the self-guided boardwalk as it was a lot cheaper than the guided beach walk. This meant we could not get to go to the beach but we still saw a lot of seals.

Kangaroo Island - Roadtrip, beautiful bay and rooftent

Kangaroo Island calling!

Okay, Monday morning it was time for my first self-organised tour with someone else than Markus. Sébastien, Jan and I met at shortly past 9am at the WickedCamper depot in Adelaide to get the payment, the paperwork and the equipment ready for our five-day trip to Kangaroo Island. As there was no Toyota Corolla available we got a (fairly ugly) Nissan Cube instead. But in regards to our luggage it turned out to be good enough to fit everything in. 

Tasmania - Wineglass Bay and Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary

Servus everyone,

At 7:30am we left Bicheno towards Wineglass Bay. The fitter ones of our tour went up Mount Amos to get the beautiful view over the bay and the not so fit ones drove to a lighthouse, most of us walked at least up to the lookout but I decided to also go all the way down to the actual beach, called Hazzards Beach Walk. It was a very steep walk and after an hour the arrival at the beach was quite emotional.

Tasmania - Cataract Gorge Launceston and Bay of Fires

Cheers world,

Okay, today we left a bit later than before, at 7:30am. (NOOOOOOOOOOO, still too early) We had to pick up four new passengers and then stopped at the Cataract Gorge of Launceston for an easy and short 45-minute walk around the beautiful gorge and we saw two wallabies (or even pademelons? Not sure).

Tasmania - Falls, Mount Field NP and bushfire detour

Hi there everyone,

On Tuesday morning five persons got picked up at my hostel and we had to navigate through the rush hour in Hobart to pick up another five people until our coach was full with the tour guide Renate and 21 persons. Then we set off to a small village to grab some lunch to take with us and after some driving we arrived at some rainforest for an easy walk past the Horseshoe Falls and the Russels Falls.

Great Ocean Road - Helicopter flight and the surf coast

Greetings my friends,

On Friday unfortunately we had to get up at 6am as well for breakfast. Jude had to find a new spare tire and therefore she dropped us at the next spot for two hours and not the usual one hour. From this Loch Ard Gorge you can see the other three apostles which you cannot see from the main platform. There is also a beach where it is safe to swim and a cave you can climb into with a dramatic story attached to it when the ship named Loch Ard shipwrecked there.

Melbourne - Cosmopolitan, Arcades and Lanes

Alrighty ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

This Tuesday we had ambitious plans for the day, so we wanted to start early. Well, didn’t work out entirely as we slept in but nevertheless we managed almost everything. It was still very cold at only 18 degrees Celsius, so we got our jeans and jackets and headed down to the famous Queen Victoria Market. It is a HUGE market with stalls and shops for food and non-food articles of all kinds.

Yeppoon - Hugging a koala! And more

Servus folks,

This morning I was especially excited about our next stop at the Cooberriepark Wildlife Sanctuary as you are allowed to actually hold and cuddle a koala!!! We got there by 11am and shortly after entering the sanctuary we were quite disappointed by the making of the surroundings and the cages as well as of the number of animals. They promised in the leaflet over 300 animals and most of them were ducks, farm animals and parrots... Also the kangaroos were not as exciting and not as many as in the Billabong Zoo but we fed them anyway with joy.

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.