Australia South Coast

Back at Sydney Airport on Feb 5th, it was time to say good-bye to Karen again for a couple of weeks. Karen really wanted to go and explore Tasmania (the little island south of Australia), so she had a connecting flight towards there.

We had 3 days planned in Sydney. The first day we could stay at Trudy’s place again. However, the second night we had a party planned in Parramatta, at the far westside of the city: Sanjay (Jason Payne), a good friend and DJ from Amsterdam, had to play there. We did know that beforehand, so we had our flights planned that we could meet up there and we booked an Airbnb-place somewhere closer to the event. Our little apartment was basically in the middle of Chinatown, which was very handy since the Chinese New Year was just beginning and there were already some celebrations going on.

It was great catching up and sharing stories with Sanjay and Nadine again, and finally had a good night out! The next day we took it easy and started packing our bags.
Monday morning we flew to Melbourne. We had an address where we could stay – Harrie, a cool Aussie who we met on the sail boat from Panama to Columbia. It was really nice catching up and sharing the rest of our travel stories from the last couple of months.
Melbourne is a great city! Lots of good atmosphere, street artists and nice architecture – some old but also some very modern and colorful buildings. The city center has a ‘free tram zone’ and furthermore is easily accessible which makes it definitely a popular city for travelers. We even went into Chinatown in Melbourne, to taste the atmosphere of Chinese New Year again and ended up eating dumplings in a super cheap place, including B.Y.O. – bring your own drinks. A very cool thing!
We did see a lot, but unfortunately Pam got a bit sick for 2 days and had to spend some time in bed. Overall, Melbourne was our favorite city in Australia, and we can’t wait to get back again!

The travel plan for the next 10 days included the Great Ocean Road, further up to Adelaide and Adelaide city itself. We would be flying out of Adelaide on the 21st.
The original idea was to go hitch-hiking again, but since we wanted to be very flexible on the way, stop here and there, in the end we decided to rent a car.

The Great Ocean Road (GOR) is a beautiful coastal motorway and a well-known tourist attraction. We spent all our nights between Melbourne and Adelaide in our tent. We looked for national parks and quiet places to spot as much wildlife as possible. Besides many close encounters with kangaroos, koalas and many colorful bird species, we also spotted a snake, a weird looking lizard, echidnas (hedgehog-like creature) and emus. Besides the wildlife, we also encountered a lot of Chinese tourists: big cameras and horrible drivers! The main attraction of the GOR, the twelve apostles (twelve limestone rock-formations near the shore), were invaded by these tourists. 
We ended this road trip with a visit to a wildlife park in Adelaide Hills. After seeing so many animals in the wild, it was great to see some of them from closer and being able to feed and touch them.

We planned to visit Adelaide because Sven knew a couple living there from a previous holiday (Bali). Although we hadn’t spent much time together in the past, there was a great click and we crashed at their place for 3 days. Andrej and Renata were great hosts: we were spoiled with food and drinks and we had our private guides around Adelaide. We were lucky with our timing with Fringe Festival (second biggest art festival in the world) around town. We also finally spent some time at the beach again! Unfortunately, time flew by way too quick and before we knew Andrej and Renata dropped us at the airport. However, we already spoke about our next meetup, anywhere in Europe: Slovenia, Austria or Holland. 

We were flying to Perth for a next chapter in our trip, to meet up with Karen and her family, and later with Xandi and old friends of him.