*** summertime ***

After I bought a van and converted it to a campervan earlier, I hit the road in December towards Queensland.
I drove to Rockhampton on the Newell highway (3 days) and from there I came down the East Coast, including: Cape Hillsbourough, Mackay, Hervey Bay, Frasier Island, Brisbane, Surfers Paradise, Byron Bay, Sydney.

(4.12.2001 - 30.12.2001).

endless highway

When I arrived in Queensland, I realised that it is unbearably hot there and you can't go in the water at all, because of the poisonous jellyfish.
At Hervey Bay I booked a 4WD coach trip on Frasier Island and on the next day I discovered Bardo Fraunholz (staff member of the Koblenz University) on the same coach.

The summit of the Mount Warning next to Surfers Paradise is supposed to be the first australian location, where you can see the sunrise. After a 70 minute ascent at 4 o'clock in the morning with my canadian fellow student Alex, we found two rain-soaked Englishmen on top of the mountain, but we couldn't see a thing because of the haze.

Bondi Beach

Merry Christmas!

burning sky

The voice from the radio announces recent road closures, the sky becomes red-gray and there is a scent of burned wood in the air.

That was the situation in Sydney for the whole Christmas time. On Christmas Day, I went with my two caravan park neighbors to Bondi Beach. It was bad luck, that even at Sydney's most popular beach the sky was dark as well. Even here at the coast line, burned gum tree leafs rained from the sky.
You might call it a "black Christmas".

Christmas Picture 2001

Kitesurfing

It became my favourite sport. I bought the equipment a while ago, but now I can practise more and more often.
Fortunately, there are no pictures yet, but here you can see some kitesurfers at Botany Bay next to the Sydney airport's runway.

During the first week of January there was the first Australian Kitechampionships at Brighton Beach, Melbourne. The water was pretty populated and you could "only" watch.

Great Ocean Road & The Grampians

or: state of emergency FLO

The Great Ocean Road trip was a repetition for me, but therefore it was uncomparably better than the weekend trip at the first time.
And: neither of us (Florian, Judith and I) knew the Grampians, a national park in the mountains, 200 kms away from Geelong.

We never stayed longer than one night at one place, and so we could visit Angelsea, Lorne, Wye River, the 12 Apostels, Peterborough, Warrnambool, Port Fairy and the Grampians within 7 days.

When we visited Obi in Wye River and Dave in Peterborough, we didn't have to go to a caravan park. We gained an interesting insight in the life of the locals instead. ;-)

We did lots of hiking in the Grampians and climbed Mt Williams for example, from where you have an amazing view on the whole national park.

  
360° picture from the summit of Mt. Williams

Flo and I started again to a 10-day adventure trip along the East Coast. We got deep into isolated national parks, which I wouldn't have dared to go to on my own.
One time we had to drive 50 kms on gravel roads to get to our camping place.

Therefore we've been rewarded with an almost empty and huge sandy beach. The wind was supernaturally constant and the sun was shining. It was the perfect day to play with the kite.

1) launching the kite

2) body dragging on the water

3) kitesurfing !

The funny animals, which we found during our expeditions, were e.g. huge lizards, black-red coloured snakes (?) and tentacles.

However, we didn't hesitate to sleep outside!

In Byron Bay, we eventually saw the waves, everybody is looking for. The largest ones were probably 3 metres high and were all breaking smoothly in one direction.

surf's up, dude

burned forest near Sydney

Sunset spectacle at Surfers "Paradise". At five o'clock in the evening, the shadows of the tower blocks are covering the beach.

big things:

big banana big prawn big sheep

And before we realised it, this short and long (3000 kms) trip was already over.
Although Flo used up 26 film rolls in Australia, we experienced many things, without being able to produce pictures here!

... as for example the dwarf in the national park ... ;-)