We got up very early the next day for two reasons: first we had another 2.5 hour drive to Canberra and the car had to be returned at 10 am. Additionally, we wanted to see the sunrise, but unfortunately it was quite cloudy why we couldn’t see anything and we directly started to drive. We soon got to know why the 160km should take over 2.5 hours. The road is very windy compared to other roads in Australia and we did around 500 m difference in altitude. But we did that easily and after we returned our tent, air mattress and air pump in Kmart (we wanted to get back our money) we arrived at around 9.55 at Europcar. We left our luggage at the nice Aussie who worked in Europcar and went to the city. First we did our way to the Australian Parliament, which is apparently the ONLY interesting sight in Canberra. Besides that, Canberra is just boring for sightseeing. Unfortunately, all the Australians who warned us before (“don’t go to Canberra it’s boring and there is nothing to do”) were right. On the other hand we were there only for half a day and that’s quite a good time to see the parliament district and we could go back to the “city” were we got picked up from our driver to Melbourne. We found a very spontaneous lift to Melbourne, otherwise we would have tried hitchhiking again. An Israeli (we unfortunately forgot his name) who drove together with his girlfriend, who moved back from Canberra to Melbourne. Therefore they were driving to Melbourne and were looking for additional passengers. 30$ per person seemed to be quite fair to us (the train would have been 57$). We started delayed at 16:15 instead of 15:30 and had quite a nice talk with his girlfriend Lauren. She is studying in Melbourne in order to become a teacher and told us from some of her former trips to India.

After a while we both were a bit sceptical due to some signs with “Sydney 260km” but stupidly we didn’t say a word (you should think the driver should know the way, right?). Then he suddenly realized that we were driving in the wrong direction, after 20 minutes, so we had to drive back all the way and lost another 45 minutes. That wouldn’t have been a big deal if we wouldn’t have had a couchsurfer in Melbourne, who obviously wanted to go to bed at some stage. The drive was said to be around 7 hours so we would have been there at around midnight, until our driver decided to have a 10 minute break for dinner which lasted more than half an hour. So we lost another 30 minutes… Then they filled up fuel: you remember we paid 60$ for the lift. After half way they paid 34$, meaning we paid for all the fuel for the drive. After it became dark, the guy stopped driving a while ago, his girlfriend had problems with driving and Tobi started to drive. As we come closer and closer to Melbourne we asked them a couple of times where they would drop us off. After we asked several times he finally said that he would drop us at the train station, just to find out that we would miss the last train to our couchsurfer who was living a bit outside of Melbourne. A cab would have been another 50-60$ which was definitely too much, a fact we told them, the guy just said it would be too late to drive us there, even though it would have cost them not more than half an hour. Apart from that we paid their whole fuel and Tobi drove for 2.5 hours during rain and dark, it would have been just nice to drive us home. After Kerstin asked quite obviously if they know if it is possible to sleep in the train station Lauren seized the chanced and directed us to drive home while the guy was sleeping in the back. It was quite obvious that she would have driven us home anyway if there wouldn’t have been this guy… Anyway, we arrived at around 00:45 am at our new home for the next week and fell asleep after a short talk with our host and two other British Couchsurfers.

Das alte Parlamentsgebäude / The old parliament building

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The most interesting part of Batemans Bay is the further north Murramarang National Park, as it includes three dreamful beaches (Pebbly, Pretty and Depot Beach) and a beautiful river into the ocean in North Durras. But before we came there we visited two other beach cities, namely Bendalong and Narawallee (incl. Mollymook). The beaches weren’t white anymore but spectacular anyway, especially Narrawallee which lies within a bay surrounded by a mangrove forest. We were even able to spot some locals while spear fishing (without any success as far as we know) and surfing. This time surfing means that the board was attached to a car with a 30-40m rope which accelerated whit full speed. It didn’t work really well, but it looked pretty funny and if we wouldn’t have had a bit of a hurry Tobi even could have tried it himself.

In order to visit the national park, the street leads through an impressive forest to the car park, where one has to pay the fee for the entry. Of course we didn’t have 7$ in coins with us (who would have that???), why we just stayed there without paying. We wanted to camp at one of the beaches and followed the suggestion of our tourist guide pointing out Pebbly Beach as a unique natural experience. Due to the bad weather this was not so amazing, but we got an idea what was meant by that. Kangaroos and wild bird everywhere and the beach only 100m apart. As we didn’t find any possibility to pay the camping fee it was even for free 🙂

Narrawella Beach

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We arrived at Jervis Bay during the afternoon and had beautiful weather. Tobi found a little bay with turquois water (Currarong) at the northern end of the bay. There is another Rock Pool there as well. Just a gorgeous area! We stayed the night in a camp ground in Huskisson in order to explore Jervis Bay the next day. Surprisingly it belongs officially to the Australia Capital Territory (ACT) and not to New South Wales, the state where we actually were. As it is the only official part of the coast which belongs to the ACT it is a marine base as well, why we could spot some ships and helicopters. We don’t want to say too much, but we saw at least ten beaches within the next 48 hours, one better and whiter than the other. Indeed we spent the afternoon at the whitest beach of the world (Hyams Beach), but please don’t ask how this is actually measured. However, it was so white that you definitely should wear sun glasses if you go there!

We left the beach with a heavy heart just to visit another extremely white beach in an even more beautiful bay. Murrays Beach (which is its name) belongs to the Booderee National Park where we also visited a lighthouse and Moes Rock. By the way, the lighthouse tells a funny story about Australian kind of engineering (or let’s rather say the art of planning the perfect lighthouse). This one was built on the suggestion of city officer who wanted to build a lighthouse at the top of the national park after some ships collided with the cliffs. So far so good. Unfortunately no one had the idea to ask someone who is experienced in boating or sailing. After it was built it figured out that all the ships passed the cliff, just to collide with the cliff 2 km north at the other end of the bay (this top goes farer into the sea than the other one.) Additionally we had another encounter with a snake, this time a black tiger snake. It is also deathly poisonous and due to her not existing fear against humans potential dangerous. She even didn’t move anywhere when we came across, why the Spanish family behind us went some meters backwards. We tried to make her moving with some loud steps and some noise which worked out after a bit (or she was just annoyed of lying on the way…)

The bays somehow reconciled us with the Australian east coast (even though it actually counts to the south coast). At the evening we went on heading to our last destination for the trip, the beaches in Batemans Bay.

Currarong Beach

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To see a bit of the coastline between Sydney and Melbourne, we rented a last time a small red car. Unfortunately the first day started directly with a lot of rain. But anyway, we didn’t want to miss a few highlights around Kiama: the Cathedral Rocks, a rocky formation that indeed resembles a church, and blow holes. As it was windy and rainy, we were lucky and could see water fountains that have been pushed out from the deep upwards. Not the promised 20-30m, but at least a few meters. We stayed for the night on a campground and as it still continued to rain, we decided to sleep in the car, not to risk again to get wet in the tent. In fact, it was really comfy in the car! The next day we drove back to Wollongong, because we wanted to visit the biggest Buddhism temple (Nan Tien Temple) of the Southern Hemisphere (!), which has been closed the day before. We learned from our mistakes and planned this time only a really short distance for these 4 days, so no problem to go back again! And it was worth it, to make a long story short: the temple was exactly like you imagine or know from TV. A peaceful haven, enormous Asian buildings… You will see that on the pictures. We went to Jervis Bay at the same day and made a stop at the 7-mile Beach.

Cathedral Rock

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So here we are, the world famous Blue Mountains… They are mostly famous for the fact that they are one of the “nature” spots in Australia which are easy to access by car or train (which is a bit of a contradiction but anyway). As we already figured out before, “experiencing” the nature bush in other parts of Australia usually comes along with a longer road trip. Nevertheless the Blue Mountains are a beautiful piece of land. By the way, they got their name not because of the colour of the mountains but due to the blue glimmer over the valley if the weather is nice. They are even kind of historically important, as their crossing allowed the exploration of Western Australia. As already mentioned they are very famous for three major groups of people. Number one are our beloved bus tourists (again the majority of them is from China) who jump in a bus in Sydney and drive to the three main attractions of the mountains, the “Three Sisters”. The second group (and we count ourselves to that one) are locals (and also some of the backpackers) who do some walking in the area for 1-3 days. Group number three faces the mountains as a good spot for extreme sport. That’s why there are a lot of tours for climbers (or people who want to become one) including abseiling in the waterfalls.

But enough with the introducing banter… We took the train on Saturday morning to Katoomba, one of the three major towns (or better villages) to visit the Blue Mountains. In the beginning we wanted to go there earlier (meaning Thursday or Friday), but unfortunately we had no luck with the weather once again. We were aware that we wouldn’t be the only ones who had the idea to visit the mountains on a sunny weekend, but we didn’t expect that the train would be filled to capacity. Fortunately, the majority of people got sorted to the already waiting tourist buses after our arrival in Katoomba, why it wasn’t that bad at all. As we left most of our stuff at Leanne’s house we had only one backpack filled with our camping gear and went to the camp ground which was directly next to one of the attractions of the Blue Mountains. Three gondolas which go over the gorge and down to the valley. Our first walk was to the Three Sisters in order to show them the respect due to them. Let’s say it like that: well, not really… They are basically three stones next to the gorge. Don’t get us wrong, the formation is really impressing, but not really worth 500,000 visitors per year. Anyway, we saw them and got in touch with a very nice and helpful staff of the visitor information who suggested us full of enthusiasm a four hour walk (to the Leura falls along the Prince Henry Cliff walk and back through the valley). We directly accepted his suggestion and started hiking (the solar charger perfectly attached to the backpack). The hike was quite impressive, first a couple of km along a cliff to a waterfall (Leura Cascades and Leura Falls). Along the waterfall, we went down into the valley and passed the Three Sisters back to the gondola. We actually thought about going back up with a gondola, because there are only 2 other ways out of the valley. The first one is 1000 steps along the Three Sisters or, according to the guy in the visitor centre, a walk with “much less steps” closer to the gondola, the Furber Steps. When we arrived at the bottom of the Three Sisters, it was already clear that we’ll miss the last gondola, so we decided to take the putative easier (and in addition more beautiful) way along the gondola. Whether you see 915 steps (Tobi counted) to be MUCH less, each to his own, anyway it was quite exhausting after a 10km hike.

Really exhausted we fell asleep immediately in order to go the next day to the Wentworth Falls. After we solved our problem with storing our luggage (inclusive tent) in the backyard of a small supermarket (there are neither lockers nor luggage storage at the train station or visitor centre), we started walking to the starting point of the hiking trails. This figured out to be a 1.5km long walk along a street and we were shortly before letting out our recently gained passion for hitchhiking, but we controlled us. Arriving, we chose the “Under and Over Cliff Walk”, mainly because it sounded quite nice and had the right time span. The name was actually the program as the walk went under and over the cliff with some beautiful lookouts over the Blue Mountains, but also along and over a waterfall. During our lunch break a little lizard showed a lot of interest in Kerstin’s food and came as close as 30 cm to catch some bred. At the end of the track we decided to walk a little detour and went down some steps to another waterfall (Empress Falls). There we were able to observe a group while abseiling the waterfall. The most interesting part was the amazing speed of the guide while actually running down the waterfall (he did around 20-30 meters in only some seconds).

After we climbed the steps back uphill, we obviously somehow had to get back to the train station and we both were not really looking forward to walking another 1.5 km along a boring uphill street. Unfortunately there were not many people at the car park why we couldn’t ask anyone for a lift directly, so we started walking along the street. After around 5 minutes, Tobi saw a car leaving the car park and while we were still thinking/discussing about if or if not to hitchhike, Tobi put out his hand and (not) surprisingly the car did stop. An Australian girl with her German boyfriend, who live in Sydney, were on a daytrip to the Blue Mountains and gave us a lift to the train station. We also had to pick up our luggage from the supermarket where we got three plums from the owner as a gift (this day we were really lucky with the Australian hospitableness 🙂 ). Some hours later we were back at Leanne’s (who cooked a meal for us again), to stay our last night at her place before we made our way to Canberra the next day. In order to do something useful with the last days we had we rented a car for four days and wanted to visit the coast between Sydney and Canberra. But more details will follow later 🙂

Katoomba Falls - gleich neben unsererem Campingplatz / right next to our camp ground

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Steve’s sister Leanne picked us up at the train station and welcomed us so lovely including offering us nice dinner. Anyway, her two dogs welcomed us before: Alex and Diesel. One of them is 4 years, the other one is around a year old and therefore very active. The two are Pitbull Terrier and very chaotic if they were together and always jealous on each other. But if they were separated both were very nice and lovely. We also met the others of Leanne’s family, the kids of her partner Megan with husband and Tim, both in our age and very nice and helpful. The next day we planned a bit, since we wanted to go to the Blue Mountains and we met Charlie, our couchsurfer from Perth, again who was working in Sydney by the time. Finally, we also got the package from Germany. Oh we didn’t mention that before: While our camping and road trips we always were in trouble recharging our electronic gears, mostly because the network was so bad sometimes that the mobiles had to be recharged every single day. So we ordered a solar charger and an adapter for the cigarette plug in the car from Amazon and got Tobi’s mother to send it from Germany to Australia. Surprisingly Amazon is not shipping to Australia (HOW CAN YOU GUYS SURVIVE WITHOUTH THAT???). It figured out to be cheaper ordering it to Germany and sending it to Australia than buying it here directly. Another proof that Australia can be quite expensive. Anyway the unpacking felt like a very late Christmas gift 🙂 Unfortunately Charlie didn’t have too much time as he spontaneously decided to fly to Canada for one month in order to go snowboarding. The next day we did the Bondi to Coogee Beach walk, a track­­ which starts at Bondi and leads to Coogee Beach. It follows the cliffs which are surrounded some smaller beaches. There were a lot of tourists at the beginning, but the further you go the less tourists you’ll find on the track. There are definitely a lot of quite nice spots around and after we saw all these beaches around the east coast we were kind of forgiving with Sydney as most beaches between Sydney and Brisbane are just very similar… The next day we took the train to the world famous Blue Mountains…

Die Hunde - the dogs

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After Tobi made friends with two Dutch girls on the campground, the drive the next day to the highway was no problem at all. The two girls planned to go north, but until the highway we had the same way. Somehow we made it to put our luggage and the four of us into their car, which was before already packed (see picture). Arrived at the highway, it was time to look for a good spot. 10 minutes after standing at the entry lane of the highway without success, we changed our place and went onto the highway. 10 minutes later we found our first lift for around 100km. Again a farmer, in an even older car, and again quite funny. He dropped us off on a truck parking spot and we stood again with Kerstin’s “Newcastle” sign on the highway. It took us a bit longer, but we found a Kiwi who drove us to Newcastle. Again a strange character, probably in his mid-30s, narcotics agent in the prison of Port Macquarie (he even had 2 tracker dogs on board) and former rugby player (what else) in the Australian army!!! Short: an absolutely relaxed guy and incredibly interested in Germany. While Kerstin had it quite comfortable on the backseat and had a nap, Tobi tried to destroy his image of a typical German. He thought basically that all Germans are well educated, thin, good looking and open-minded (he probably thinks so because he often picks up German backpackers, who are in average well educated and due to the lack of money underfed and somehow open-minded otherwise they wouldn’t be in Australia.)

In the beginning, he wanted to drive us to the town of our couchsurfer Greg, but after a call with his boss he had to drop us earlier, unfortunately at the wrong side of Newcastle. Greg was, however, so nice to pick us up from there. That’s already a perfect description of Greg, extremely nice, helpful and the same age as we are and he close before his next trip to Brazil (after he already spent 3 years in Canada, USA and Central America).

The three days were filled with a lot of sightseeing. Greg drove us to the city of Newcastle the next day, where we could see the biggest coal harbor of the world (yes you read correct, NOT of the southern hemisphere). He also picked us up again in the afternoon and showed us the nice café “I Love Oma” (German for grandma), whose owners are immigrants from a town not too far from Munich. Later on we picked up another couchsurfer from the train station, Anna from Denmark. After some talking Greg gave all of us a mountain bike and we cycled through the bush. Greg did the same in the morning and already told us that he directly drove into the rain, but we didn’t think much about it as we were starting when there was not even a cloud visible in the sky. Unfortunately Greg seemed to attract the rain this day, why we came into a heavy rain shower after only 10 minutes of driving which kept on until we were back at the house. It was extremely funny and a completely different Australian experience. After a warm shower, we drove to the supermarket in order to cook our new wrap recipe for Greg.

The next day, we rented a car together with Anna to go to Nelson Bay, a bay 80km north of Newcastle. Finally a coastal part of the east coast that hit our expectations, as after Noosa everything looked quite similar. Crystal clear water, really pretty bays and meter-high sand dunes. In addition, an offshore sand island that is connected to the mainland during low tide and you even can walk to it during that time (off course there was high tide when we were there…). And then it became quite exciting, after we walked along the “One Mile Beach” we reached Samurai Beach that figured out to be a nudist beach. .. Back at the car (where all of us left our thongs), Kerstin realized disappointingly that someone stole her new-bought expensive Havaianas-thongs just bought in Noosa. Who is doing things like that?????? Arrived at the next beach, Tobi realized that his smartphone was missing. What’s going on today??? So we drove back to One-Mile-Beach and indeed found his mobile in a sand dune, the beginning of our walk. We also could have been unlucky and could have to walk for half an hour along the beach, but at least we had a bit of luck this day.

After we dropped off the car the next day, we drove with Greg to a sea-pool directly built in the cliffs. During high tide, the waves from the ocean reach the pool. Extremely cold but almost idyllic, mainly because the pool derives from the time when the first settlers arrived in Newcastle. Afterwards, we enjoyed a coffee close to the sea and drove to a guided brewery visit with a subsequent free beer tasting. As German you cannot say no 🙂

Then we had to go to the train to drive to our next hosts in the southwest of Sydney. Because couchsurfing in Sydney didn’t work (again :-/), Steve (our couchsurfer from Gladstone) asked his sister to host us and she luckily accepted (btw thanx again to Steve 😉 ). As the 3.5h train drive only costed us 8$, we didn’t hitchhike for that (probably would have been worked not as well as before). There were still a few highlights on the list around Sydney, which one is another story.

Das Auto war voll bis obenhin / The car was really packed

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