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| Australia part 3 (under construction) Fraser Island After leaving the boat in Airlie we took the nightbus to Hervey Bay, app. 900 km to the south. After a memorable night cramped in too small seats with a not functioning airco we arrived and arranged a small 4WD car to explore Fraser Island. This is an overgrown sanddune of 120 by 15 km, now filled with forrests and lakes, also a World heritage area. The sandroads require 4wheel driving, which was especially enjoyed by J., a typical male thing apparently (so maybe Jud is not gay after all (Anita dixit)). On the East coast there are long wide beaches that are transformed in 4WD motorways at low tide. After visiting a very clear lake (Lake McKenzie) we drove up the motorway to the north. In the evening we camped on the beach, which was by now deserted, under the stars... The next day, after not swimming in the sea because the sharks were patrolling the coast (it's hard to swim in Australia...)we did a couple of walks to lakes and sandblows followed by a 'scenic' (kzieniks) drive back to the Ferry. We also saw 2 dingos, Aussi's 'native dog' believed to have arrivied 4000 years ago. Fraser is one of the places where they haven't been inbreeding with normal dogs. Fraser is a good place to spend a few days. Brisbane (staying with Tineke and Bart) The bus from Hervey bay took us to Brisbane (abt 5 hours), the capital of Queensland with 1.6 M inhabitants. Bart (Tineke's husband, a former colleague from SPECS) picked us of from the busstation and phoned home to announce he had picked up to vagabonds for dinner. They are living in Capalaba, a suburb in a very spacious home with swimming pool, which was a bit freezing a the time (The good weather had left us finally, temp dropping to a freezing 20 C). We spent a couple of very nice days enjoying the van Beukerings family life, Tineke's cooking, good beds and Jorien's (eldest daughter) birthday. Especially great was the fact that we did not have to think about where to sleep the night and what to do, all was arranged for: Thanks Bart and Tinus!! |
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| Australia 3: South Queensland |
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| deserted beach... Sanddunes al over |
| Beach motorway on FraserIsland |
| On the 18th of December we did a great hike in Springbrook National Park (about 100k south of Brisbane) a rainforest in an old crater. It was not a very quiet walk since it was cycade breeding season. These are a sort of crickets on steroids, twice the size, four times the noise. Really deafening. We also came across a first snake in Australia. Jud jumed about 5 meters in the air for what turned out to be a harmless python, that didn't even notice us... |
| Tineke, Jorien and Anne |
| In one of the parks near Brisbane we met a couple af Walibi's (smaller kangaroos). |
| Adelaide to Melbourne We caught the flight to Adelaide on the 19th of December, picked up our rental car (an unwanted upgrade, a Mitsubishi Magna executive, about 4 times the size of our own car in Holland) and escaped the city as fast as possible. It's not very fair to Adelaide, which has its nice parts, but we were not used to cities... We ended up in Borossa valley, an important wine region (eg Jacobs Creek) where some wine tasting and more drinking was the objective. Needless to say that we succeeded... Kangaroo Island (see foto special) The day after (getting up later than usual) we drove over to Kangaroo Island, about 100 km south of Adelaide. On the island we did see many kangaroos (or walabies, difference is difficult to see), most of them flat on the road as roadkills, but also a few life specimens... One was even helping with the cooking! The island itself is great for spending a few days, most of the island is national park and has fantastic rocky shores, forests, seals and penguins (we didn't see those) and limestone caves. We walked some tracks to deserted beaches and spent some time at the remarkable rocks, which reminded us very much of Dali paintings (he didn't travel to Australia did he?). Hard to tell in writing so go to the foto page to see the pictures After Kangaroo island we set of in the direction of the Grampians, a mountain range just across the border of South Australia and Victoria (Melbourne). We had some anxious moments on the petrol front, because this part of Australia is a little backward (like NL 20 years ago) and most things close at 5 PM. On fumes we reached one that was open and could continue our journey. Here we noticed how big Australia actually is, very long drives with nothing more than farms or bush until we reached the Grampians. Go to Australia 4 for further reading |