Australia (Part 4/5) - Queensland
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2012
Mount Isa: The road trip to Cairns is endless
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| Mount Isa |
Even there is absolutely NOTHING to see except desert, grass and sand, the scenery is magnificent.
The roads seem so long lasting and never-ending. They reach until the beginning of the horizon and as far the eye can reach.
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| Long, endless roads |
Just some minutes ago I stopped at a roadhouse, having a foot bath and booked the flight from Cairns to Papua New Guinea. I will depart on Monday next week. Actually, I already searched for a way to change the flight dates, cause Monday is so very soon. So I think I will contact the customer care of the airline, to see if I can change it.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2012
Cairns: Arriving in Cairns
On Thursday evening I finally arrived in Cairns. On the way to here, it was so very hot and I also passed the hottest area in Queensland. They had about 43 degrees in the shadow!! ^^!Even I had 3 days full of driving, the time and the KM’s flew away like nothing.
And there were in particular very very very few cars that I have crossed along the way. I would assume there weren’t much more cars than about 50, all along the 2400 km’s in the outback.
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| Cairns City Center |
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| Along the beach in center of Cairns |
Pajero Car Crash
Oh before i forget (which would probably be better), I had a crash with the Pajiero yesterday…. It was a light signal and I drove into the car in front of me. As my car luckily has a bull bar mounted, it didn’t damage anything. But the other car… was a little bit damaged. Dam it.. !!!:( I have to pay it!MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012
Cairns: Bye Bye Papua! Hello Cairns! Hello Malaria?
My eyes burn still a little bit from the boat drive on Wednesday at the Sepik River :)I finally arrived in Cairns today during midday, after a delay of 1 hour by the plane in Port Moresby. In the plane, I created a things-to-do list and the first thing on it is getting the car from the service station. Thankfully the car was still there and not stolen or anything. And… tada.. it is also everything alright with the car. A regular service was done and nothing else seems to be wrong.
Right back in the campground, the first thing I did was getting out the BBQ grill. I couldn’t wait to have the first bite of the delicious fresh bought T-bone steak!
Now its 10pm and my list of things to do didn’t get much smaller, but I'm on the best way to achieve it the next days. For example, there are tasks like “contacting the crashed-car-man”, “planning-the-next-days-and-weeks”, “washing clothes”, “sorting pictures” and other small but time-consuming things.
I'm on the same campground as last time, but the amount of campers has increased by nearly 100%. Most of them are Japanese campers that look like hippies from 40 years ago :)
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2012
Cairns: Having Malaria in Cape Tribulation?
The last few days I felt somehow sick! I didn’t have a real pain in the stomach, but there was a little pain. Also, I had to visit the toilet many times today! Beside this, I felt also some kind of dizziness, tired eyes and a little bit of a headache! By now, I feel alright again, had dinner and don’t feel anything anymore like I did during the day! When these symptoms are still there tomorrow, I think I will go to the hospital. Cause after being in Timor-Leste and PNG, the chance having malaria or dengue fever is quite big. Hopefully its just some normal kind of “sickness” – I'm actually not so in the mood spend the next two weeks in a hospital. But if anything is wrong, then thankfully I'm back in Australia and do not have to say hello to a PNG hospital somewhere in the jungle beside the Sepik river..haha!! |
| Port Douglas |
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| Cooktown |
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2012
Cairns: So this is the (Great) Barrier Reef
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| Corals in Great Barrier Reef |
Well I guess diving in Australia is
compared to other countries anyway different.
Here, a dive boat with 100 or 200 divers on a boat is average.
Thankfully I found a boat that was limited to about 50 divers, which were reduced to about 30, when we were transferred to the liveaboard (the boat that has facilities for overnight trips). So since the transfer to that boat the space per person increased and the feeling, being in an overcrowded prison somewhere in Afghanistan disappeared. And even underwater there was very seldom the situation seeing other divers except for the buddy.
The main difference is, that the divers here were
The last years I have heard and read several times,
Huge coral fields have already completely died and look like a coral disposal area.
But there are still big areas, where the corals are awesome and the especially the diversity and amount of small fish is great.
Now I'm sitting in McDonald's somewhere in the middle of Cairns and some minutes ago I booked the one-way flight from Brisbane to the Solomon Islands. This means, I have time to drive down the 1800km to Brisbane until December 12 and I guess I will leave Cairns tomorrow or on Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2012
Queensland East Coast Roads: Yaaaaawwwnn!!
I left Cairns yesterday in the afternoon after
I went to the garage to pay the final bill for the repair of the damaged car. Thankfully it didn’t come that expensive as I thought it would be – and finally, I was able to get another discount. But in summary its of course just too much. Every $ was too much. However, it was my fault... So now I'm happy having that topic behind me!After PNG and the "nice" Cairns, I'm back on the road and first, I have to acclimate myself to the road and the driving again. The scenery is completely different than it was up until Cairns. Until there was a “very special” landscape, made of the desert and a kind of a mystical emptiness all around. Along the east coast, it always remembers me driving in Europe. On the route are famous locations like Townsville, Airlie Beach, Rockhampton, Gladstone and Hervey Bay. Famous, but the connecting roads are too European and too boring - its green, has trees, narrow streets, houses beside the road and cows on the willows everywhere :D
MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2012
Hervey Bay: White Shark at Frasier Island
I'm in Hervey Bay now, which is the so called departure place to the famous Fraser Island – the biggest sand island in the world and, as advertisement says, with some of the most beautiful beaches on the planet. But advertisements anyway always speak too much, don't they?
Actually I wanted to go there today - with my own car. But when I was at the tourist information to ask for transfer fees over there, I had to hold back my eyes from falling out of the eye socket! So I decided to cancel this plan. And in all objectivity, its just an island – with sun, sand, water, wild stray dogs! OK, the 4x4 driving on the sand dunes would have been a lot of fun, but, its anyway just an island and in my opinion definitively too expensive getting there, for just one day!Instead I went for a 10km morning run
along the Hervey Bay Esplanade. Its the first time Ive been running since departure in beginning of September. As a reward to my body, i went having lunch at a seafood restaurant and had awesome barramundi fish and chips! Later the day I was in some kind of shark information center. The center is run by the famous Australian shark fisher called "Hislop Vic",
who is fighting for the legalisation of big white and tiger shark fishing! In the center, all the walls are fully plastered with shark ivories from white sharks, tiger sharks, bull sharks and other “weapons” of small and big underwater creatures.The main attraction is a real dead white shark in an air conditioned glass container!
Tha HELL! This beast is huge!!!!
I read a lot about white sharks and saw many documentations and reportages, but, I never ever imagined how frightening that fish might be in reality - even it was just a dead one!!!!
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012
Brisbane: Weird Cyclists
After my second day here in Brisbane, I would say, for me its an unexpected nice and clear city and finding orientation is easy like that: just go 5 seconds to the tourist information counter, get a map and roam around like a pro. |
| Brisbane |
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| Brisbane City Center |
So my solution was “ask-somebody-who-has-a-mobilephone,-if-I-can-use-the-net-for-5-minutes-to-access-my-internet-banking”! After hours I finally got again some money in my pocket!
Tomorrow ill drive to the gold coast, where Yvonne my cousin lives! And my plans for the next few days are doing my homework for the Solomon islands trip, which already starts next Wednesday.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2012
Gold Coast: And the Surfers Paradise
Now its my third day here at my cousin Yvonne's
place. She and her boyfriend Rhett are living in the very nice suburb “Runaway Bay”, just one street from the beach. And on the backyard of the each house is also a pier into the river, from which the ocean is accessible in a few seconds with the boat. So today morning I took the kayak and paddled along the river out into the ocean to an island, a few hundred meters from the beach.Thankfully the temperatures are much lower than up in the north of Australia and as soon the sun goes down and the wind blows a bit, its getting seriously freezing!!
Yesterday I went Surfers Paradise, the most
famous district along the Gold Coast, and watched out for surf schools and in the afternoon I had my first surfing lesson.The briefing was pretty short and already a few minutes later, after walking through half Surfers Paradise with our surfboards, where we looked like a bunch of dumbasses, we stood at the beach and were shown how we had to handle the board in the water.
And see there, two hours later I was able to stand on the board! Well most of the group was able to stand at the end, but unbelievable how many untalented fat people are trying to surf and get disappointed when they don’t catch even just one wave to stand up…haha
So today I had me second lesson out of three. As already yesterday the ocean brought some big waves, the todays waves were again much more stronger than yesterday and it was very difficult to learn and practice in these conditions. But it makes fun!
In a few days I will fly to the Solomon Islands, excited but still have many things to plan until then.
MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2013
Brisbane's Super Storm
After the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, Im came back to Australia at the Gold Coast, right into the eye of the cyclone! Since Friday here in Queensland is a very severe super storm roaming around.The flight yesterday to Brisbane was scary and people were shouting around :)!
But it was long time ago since i last time experienced passengers applaud and clap their hands for the pilots at the end.
Actually, I booked the train from Brisbane Airport to Gold Coast, but because of the storm it was out of service. Thankfully I booked the ticket in advance, cause now the train company had to organize and pay my trip to Gold Coast. They simply put me in a taxi – a business class taxi and the transport costs were over 200$ - including a swipe out to McDonalds :D.
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| Back to Australia after the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia |
My route around Australia:
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Route around Australia
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