07.06.-14.06.2013 Sydney

At Kuala Lumpur I took a cheap and direct overnight Air Asia Flight to Sydney. I expected immigration procedures to be very complicated, but it was actually really easy to enter. My tip: Declare something at customs (get in the Red Line), then you’ll be searched and questioned less and everything is much quicker… 😉 The first few days in Sydney I spent on Bondi Beach, where I could stay with a couple I had met in La Paz.

Bondi Beach and surroundings are absolutely beautiful – great cliffs and (during winter) deserted beaches!

Another night, I met another girl I know from my time in South America.
On Friday night, I was introduced to the classic party area King’s Cross, and on Saturday I could enjoy the Light Festival “Vivid”, during which some buildings in Sydney’s inner city are nicely illuminated; the Opera House was especially great.
On Sunday, I moved to Kevin’s place; I had met him in Borneo. I joined him and two of his friends at a Dash Berlin (a Dutch Trance DJ) party, which was awesome! 🙂 The next day was quiet as a result. On Tuesday I discovered Sydney town centre together with Kevin, especially visiting the harbour, of course.
We also stopped at various small bays where we had excellent views across the city.
On Wednesday I had a day trip into the Blue Mountains. We were unlucky with the weather at first: grey, dense fog, a sprinkle of rain. Hiking wasn’t really on the menu, under these conditions, nor was a good view.
Fortunately, the sky cleared in the afternoon, though, and I could see the Three Sisters after all! A really wonderful view…
The next day we went to the beaches north of Sydney – from Palm Beach to Manly Beach. During winter, all beaches are deserted and fantastically beautiful.
Only Manly didn’t appeal to me so much, for it was quite touristy. On our last day in Sydney, we went for a long walk through Centennial Park, a gigantic park with nice lakes and many different birds.
We then spent a cultural afternoon in art galleries of the most varied kinds – I was especially taken by the White Rabbit Gallery, where we participated in a guided tour.

15.06.-21.06.2013 Alice Springs and surroundings

I spent a night at the airport and then started my way to Alice Springs early in the morning. At the airport, I met Marta from Poland, whom I had met via Couchsurfing. Together, we booked the typical Alice Springs 3 day trip that covers King’s Canyon, Kata Tjuta and Uluru. The tour was really great: A fabulous group (20 people), sleeping outdoors in “swags”, excellent and abundant food – and obviously the sights themselves! The weather didn’t really work for us, unfortunately; it was mostly cloudy, which doesn’t do a lot of good to pictures. 😉 During our hike through King’s Canyon it even rained a bit – but the Canyon was still very impressive!
Kata Tjuta was awesome, too – gigantic red rocks, lined up in wavy shapes. It’s difficult to describe – so I’ll let the pictures speak for me:
Uluru was still my highlight. We were lucky and had enough time to admire it from all angles and at different hours.
I was amazed by our walk around the entire rock, where we could see the various faces of Uluru.
I regret to say that most people in the group decided to mount the rock (only 2 of them succeeded) – despite the Aboriginal people expressly requesting that this be not done. For Aboriginal Australians, Uluru is a sacred place. It is sad to see that there are such disrespectful people 😦

Back in Alice Springs, we did another day trip to Palm Valley – by 4WD. And those streets were really the right streets for 4WD! The tour was great – we saw wild horses and rock-wallabies…
And nature in the MacDonnell Ranges is truly amazing and our guide really knew what he was talking about…
We took another day to visit Alice Springs a bit – the Royal Flying Doctors’ base (which is just a very small museum, unfortunately) and the School of Air, where they teach children living in the outback, far away from any civilisation. They are equipped with webcam and live chat and it was very interesting to see this setup. We could even watch a lesson live! 🙂

22.06.-03.07.2013 Roadtrip Alice Springs – Darwin

The following day, I started my journey from Alice Springs to Darwin. This part of my travels I spent together with Jasper from Holland, who I had met via Gumtree.
Summing it all up, it was a great road trip: We slept in the car, mostly camping in the wild, had a campfire every evening and improvised meals on a little gas cooker.
We went down endless straight roads, being the only ones around for kilometres at a time.
Of course we also saw a lot: First, we took a detour to the West MacDonnell Ranges to visit various gorges and water holes. Some of them were really nice and we did a few pleasant walks.
The most remarkable stop was Devil’s Marbles, which I’ve always wanted to see. Rocks lie around like gigantic red marbles, spread across the land… incredibly impressive! 🙂
There is a smaller version, “The Pebbles”, a little further away, and we found a nice camping spot there.
Naturally, we didn’t leave out Katherine Gorge either, although unfortunately the viewpoint only reveals the entry to the gorge – the rest of it is only accessible on an expensive boat tour.
Edith Falls is well worth a visit, too – a waterfall with a large pond, nicely inviting for a refreshing bath. We also went to the Kakadu National Park, of course. Starting at the southern entrance, we drove in a circle, stopping at all the important sights. During those days, we did many little hikes, although most of them led through more or less unspectacular landscape. The really beautiful spots could mostly be reached directly by car. An exception being the splendid Gunlom Falls, where you can hike up to the natural ponds – and swim there with a great view! 🙂
The sunset over Yellow Water was nice, too, even though we were by far not the only ones there…
We dedicated almost an entire day to the Aboriginal rock art. There are 2 famous rock art places in the Kakadu NP: Nourlangie and Ubirr. We did 3 ranger guided tours there, which are short tours led by a ranger telling you about various paintings and the lifestyle of the Aboriginal people. It’s hugely interesting, and without a guide you couldn’t make much sense of the paintings…
We did 3 more such tours in Ubirr and then watched the amazing sunset. I definitely liked Ubirr best within the Kakadu NP!
The next day, we already left Kakadu and drove on to Litchfield National Park. On our way, we stopped at the Jumping Croc Cruises: You go on a boat trip and the crew looks for crocodiles. As soon as they see one, they tempt it with fresh meat bait on a sort of fishing rod. This makes the crocodile jump out of the water and thus show its full size and force to the gaping tourists 😉
You may approve of this or not (I’m in two minds myself), but it certainly was exciting! Then we drove on to Litchfield NP. Our first stop: Gigantic termite mounds, a good spot to pose for a picture:
Afterwards, we only ever saw waterfalls in Litchfield NP, heaps of them, one after the other. They were really beautiful, too, but very crowded by tourists from Darwin on a public holiday.
We spent 2 days in Darwin. There isn’t much to see, but it was nice to enjoy the perks of being in a real city again, and leaving behind the strains of sightseeing and driving 😉 The sunset in Nightcliff was beautiful – we leisurely watched it in the company of a little beer.
The best for me, however, was the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory – a highly informative museum presenting various sections on Aboriginal Australians, plants and wildlife, shipbuilding and cyclone Tracy. And then it was time for me to travel on my own again. After a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant I said good-bye and went off to the airport – to a plane bound for Cairns…