Fremantle - Exploring tunnels with Christine

Hurray everybody!
I got a visitor last Friday! My friend Christine who I met in Melbourne and whom I have been in contact with eversince has taken a flight very early in the morning (poor girl!) to get to Perth, WA for the first time in her life. I picked her up at the airport at 9:30am and we headed straight for Fremantle. We had so much to talk about!!! And actually it was a little bit hard for me to speak completely in German again.
As she will be here for only four days we already planned the visits for each day and I can tell ya: they are jam-packed! I parked the Saab of my host family near the Fremantle Arts Centre and we had a brief look inside.

Fremantle - Market, prison, cannon, shipwrecks, beer and art

Howdy partners,

It is Friday and this means it is my first day off for the week. HURRAY!

The evening before Cécile went to a get-together of French mothers from around Perth. A friend of hers needed a babysitter for this evening, so I stayed there for four hours while the kids were sleeping as the father was away for work. The money I got for the babysitting suited me very well for my daytrip to Fremantle, the harbor city of Perth. In the morning Cécile dropped me off at the Canning Bridge Station where I took a bus to Fremantle. It took about 35 minutes to get there. I arrived at 9am and went into the city center, past this Town Hall and into the Visitor Information Center.

 

I got a map and some more information of what is worth visiting and then I headed for the Fremantle Market which is only open from Friday to Sunday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Rockhampton - Botanic Garden and Tourist Drive no. 10

Hi there everyone,

On Sunday, the 22^nd of December (fourth advent) we drove early in the morning to the free park and zoo of Bundaberg which is not a big or nice zoo. After only 30 minutes we left and got onto the Bruce Highway further North. At about 1:30pm we arrived at the Visitor Information Center of Rockhampton and got some ideas of what to see in the area and went first to the Botanic Garden where there is also a free zoo. This zoo is much bigger than the one in Bundaberg and we saw some cute koalas and other animals.

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.