Australia (or 'Straya), East Coast

Australia (East Coast, 29.12.15-13.01.16)

Not only it was time for a new country again, Sven’s mum Karen was going to come to Australia as well to travel (partly) with us! By coincidence, Sven’s aunt Ria was in Sydney too and we all managed to stay at Trudy, a friend of hers. The apartment was not far from the city and by ferry it would only take 10 minutes to Circular Quay – that was the harbor at the Opera House. Since we landed a day earlier than Karen, Ria and we had a nice day in the city. In the evening, Karen arrived as well – a very nice reunion after 8 months.

In the beginning of our journey we were planning on spending New Year’s Eve somewhere in NZ, but since we got to know that it would not be very spectacular, we decided to celebrate in Sydney and expected a big party down at the Harbor Bridge/Opera House. The day of NYs Karen and we went downtown to check out the area. We had to join the cue to enter the restricted area around the Opera House. Karen ended up going back to Ria and we stayed to experience the big spectacle. The weather was beautiful and we had another 11 hours until the countdown. We were lucky and had a spot right at the waterfront. Unfortunately, the expected party-atmosphere lacked a little – not much music and people were mostly just sitting around with their families.  At 9pm there was a firework set for the children and after waiting many hours, at 12 o’clock we were rewarded with a gigantic firework all around us – just spectacular and totally worth waiting that long. Afterwards we took a cab back to the others, cheered with a glass of champagne and went to bed. The next two days we took it easy and sorted out a couple of things. We managed to rent a car, packed up and started our road-trip up north.
We had about 10 days to travel up to Brisbane to visit Pam’s host-family and wanted to stop and see some other family and friends on the way.

It was the 2nd of January and the first stop was Dangar Island. Karen and Sven have family members who live in a nice little house on this rather small island. We took the ferry and had lunch with them, before showing us around their house. On the way back we were going to stay there for 2 nights and enjoy the beach and nature for that time.
In the afternoon we continued until Smiths Lake to visit Reno and his family, friends of Pam. We stayed there for the night and the next morning Reno showed us various beached and a local specialty market, before we continued our journey.

We did not really have a plan on where to stop next but since the weather was quite wet, we did not have much choice. We had a small rain-gap and had a walk through a little park in Port Macquarie. Pam had been there before and mentioned that back then she saw hundreds of flying foxes (bats) hanging down in the trees. That made everyone curious, so we decided to go and take a look – and indeed: we could smell them from meters away and then we saw them, hanging upside down.. literally hundreds of them. We were even luckier and Pam (without glasses and therefore super sharp eyes) spotted a koala in the tree!!
Just in time, it started to rain again and we drove off. Due to the weather and fully booked accommodations, we drove all the way to Grafton, to spend the night in a Motel.

Due to the rain, we decided to drive to Casino, where Pam’s host-sister lives with her husband Mykel and little son Oliva. The afternoon was used to catch up and sort out a couple if things for the upcoming days. The next day, Karen and Sven went to explore the surrounding national parks and Nimbin (a hippie village) while Pam stayed home with Megan and Oli to catch up some more. The following day, the backpacks and cars were backed up again. For the next 3 days, Karen was going on her own to the coast around Lennox Heads, and we went with Megan up to Mountain Creek (near Brisbane) to see Peggy, Pam’s host-mum. Finally the weather also cleared up and we had about 28-32° and blue sky. We went to various beaches, chilled at home, enjoyed good food and finally did some workouts again. For Pam it was very nice to see her host-family and could spend a fair bit of time with them again.

On Saturday the 9th, it was time to say goodbye and meet up with Karen again. On our way back south we would spend one night near Yamba. While Sven was driving, he suddenly stopped and turned around: Kangaroos! First we spotted one, then another one, and then a whole group (about 8 of them). They weren’t too scared and gave us enough time to take plenty of pictures: Check! While driving further we almost even killed another one, but Sven was still sharp and careful enough to avoid a collision.

Another night we camped near Barrington Tops National Parks. There were (not scared) cows walking around the camp side, but furthermore this area had not much exciting to offer and we went for a small hike to a nearby water dam, which was rather disappointing. We quickly resumed down south.

Our last stop before getting back to Sydney was Dangar Island. There we could spend the last two nights at the cottage of Karen’s relative with whom we already met up with on our way north. A lovely place with Wi-Fi to get up to date again, plan our next road trip to NZs’ south island and furthermore just chill and relax. One very unique aspect about the island were the very colorful birds and cockatoos, which woke us up both mornings with their morning songs.