Great Ocean Road tour

Monday morning saw the start to our 3-day tour on the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide, with Goin South tours. The first thing you noticed when you got on the two-lane highway outside Melbourne was that there's absolutely nothing out there. Between the bush towns that can be separated hundreds of kilometers from each others is only empty vastness. Coming from as undensely populate a country as Finland is, I should be used to the lack of crowds but still, I have never seen roads as empty as these. And I haven't even been to the Outback yet.

Lack of towns along the long road (almost 1000km with all the sidetracks we did) didn't really bother us for four reasons: first, admittedly, we slept most of the way as it's just so tempting to close your eyes in the warm van. Second, we still like looking at the bush way too much. Third, we had a bunch of great activities that we stopped for on the way. Fourth, our small international group (people from England, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and obviously us too form Finland) was a lot of fun. Luckily to koalas like us (meaning we want to either sleep or eat most of the time), they were also as exhausted as we were during the nights - I've never slept so well in a 10 bed dorm.

On the first day we drove along the Great Ocean Road the gave the name to tour. The road stretched hundreds of kilometers along the coast line between Melbourne and Adelaide. It was built because the ocean was so lethal that it had given the coast a not-so-nice name, The Shipwreck Coast. The coast is very beautiful, with the ocean hitting the ground with waves, so hard that the erosion has built wonderful pillars of rocks. The geologist mother of my friend Salla would've gone crazy seeing all of that. My own mother not so much, as she would've had to keep her eyes shut most of they way, not being that fond of heights. Along the way we also stopped in a koala sanctuary, where we got to meet these furry friends for the first time, alongside with some kookaburra birds.

After spending the night in Warrnambool, we headed to the Grampians national park. Our first activity of the day was to go kangaroo-spotting in the forest. And oh how many we managed to sneak close to! Some of them (the males) were as big as I am, and some others (the females, obviously) had a baby in their pouch. We also saw some emus, which were also as big as me. For a reason we though it better not to get close enough to piss them off - I've never really wanted to get beaten up by a roo.

The next thing we did was to visit the McKenzie falls. I've never been a fan of waterfalls - actually I find them quite boring. However, I have to take that opinion back now, as these were the first waterfalls ever to impress me. They were just gorgeous.After lunch it was time to go up again: to climb a mountain. I thought we were just up for a climb along a paved path, and was taken by surprise when I got to lead our group up the mountain, scrambling over huge rocks and having to use my hands for pulling myself up. It was a lot of fun though, and the view up on the top was definitely worth the sweat.The night we spent in another very Aussie small town called Naracoorte. It didn't matter that there was nothing to do, because the hostel owner stuffed us up with delicious dinner and apple pie for dessert, and with found some nice Hardys in the Woolworths.

The next morning started with a top fun, below ground experience: caving in the World Heritage listed Naracoorte caves. Squeezing, growling and wriggling myself through the tunnels and tiny wholes in the rocks pulled my heartrate up quite often, as I do get slightly claustrophobic. Streching yourseld to very creative positions while hanging odd an underground cliffside with bare hands, the only sound being your panting and the only light coming from your headlamp... that's an experience! And the whole thing was pretty cheap as well, only $20 (14 euros). (Looks like Aussies aren't too strict about safety rules... You would never be allowed in caves like that in Europe or the US.)
Our second activity for the day was winetasting on a Parandha valley vineyard. I don't know much about wines besides the names of the most usual grapes, but to me all the red wines we tried tasted the same, and the whites were a bit watery in taste. There was a nice dog there, though.

In the end of the day we crossed to a new state: South Australia. On crossing the border we had to turn our clocks back 30 minutes - to be 7,5 hours ahead of Finland (Eastern European Time), I reckon - what a weird time difference! Welcome to sleepy Adelaide.

Melbourne

We loved Melbourne. The reason why we prefer the city to its rival Sydney is, that it just has much more character. The city is filled with easy-going, relaxed people, who seem to be far less superficial or money-oriented than their fellows in Sydney.




We're still not used to the Australian way of driving on the left side of the road. It seems to be hardwired to our brain that you should primarily watch for cars coming from your left. Thanks to this, we have been at risk of getting hit by a car so many times already. Luckily we're not driving a car, so we're only a danger to ourselves. Instead, we usually use public transportation, except in Melbourne: we are actually cheap enough to go for exercise and walk everywhere, just to be able to avoid paying the expensive tickets in trams or buses.

We didn't really do much in Melbourne. Mostly we just hung out at one of our hostels (one night in King Street Backpackers, two in Lords Lodge and four in The Nunnery - all of them lovely). Especially our second hostel Lords Lodge had a great courtyard in which we spent many moments of complete relaxation, having a slow breakfast and listening to reggae. If I closed my eyes I could imagine I was at a Finnish festival on a perfect summer day. The difference in Australia is that instead the 5ish days like that you get in Finland in a year, here the number is hundreds.

One day we managed to get ourselves moving and went to visit the ACMI, that is, Australian Center of Moving Image. The museum was devoted to the history of movies, and had some fantastic displays. It also had some interactive bits: for instance, you could shoot a video of yourself in the Matrix style. We had a great time there. I would recommend anyone who finds themselves in Melbourne to go there. It's free.

We also went to see Alice in Wonderland one night. It was the first 3D movie experience for both of us. The movie itself wasn't that special, but I loved the visuals and the three-dimension thing. I really want to go see more movies in 3D, it really feels like you're there within the scene yourself.

Me and Inka are trying hard to drive each other crazy. She keeps citing some tips and warnings from her book about vitamins. I contribute to the being-annoying-contest by singing, which I absolutely cannot do. I'm sure all other Finns would also appreciate my version of Rolli, Thiliathalia or Hapsiaislaulu as much as Inka does... However, we know each other two well to get angry. If other people would understand when we talk to each other, they would imagine we're trying to imitate Donald Duck's nephews from the way we finish each others' sentences. It's mad!

Our reason to stay in Melbourne for a week was to attend the Formula 1 Grand Prix. We had bought 4-day passes, but ended up going only for Saturday and Sunday. I used to be a formula fan when I was a child, so it was exciting to see the cars, and the drivers in flesh. The sound of the cars could be heard from kilometers away - luckily we had had the sense to bring earplugs. One would think that it's stupid to watch a formula race live, because the cars fly by so fast that you only get a second's glimpse of them before they're already gone, and don't have any idea of what's going on without watching the screen. However, it was still as much fun as any sporting event, being part of the crowd cheering at Mark Webber or flinching when he missed up. We were also spotted by a group of Finnish men and went to hang out with them, waving our flags and laughing at the lack of success that Kovalainen (the Finnish driver) had.


Monday welcomed us with an early wake up call and a walk to the pick-up point of our next tour.

Tassie 18.-23.3.2010

From Melbourne we flew over to Tasmania, the island just below continental Australia. Our destination was the island's capital and third-biggest city Hobart. We didn't know that bringing fruits to Tasmania is forbidden, so got a bit anxious when a beagle came to snuff up our stuff and Inka's backpack was taken aside. Luckily, her dried plums were allowed, so she didn't end up with a hefty fine.

Hobart had a nice small town atmosphere. It felt like going back 40 years in time, looking at all the old retro style store signs. Outside the city centre all houses had only one storey - apparently this is the common style in Australia. The people in the city were clearly of the down-to-earth type: everybody seemed to dress for comfort and weather instead of style, so you would rather see people in fleece jumpers than high heels. You could also tell from their face that they enjoy the outdoorsy lifestyle, as the sun damage was clearly visible on their skin. Hobart also boasts the deepest harbour in the Southern hemisphere, but frankly, there's not so much more to see.

On Friday we participated in a tour to Freycinet national park up the East Cost. We got to do some hiking in the forest and climb on the lookout to see the famous Wineglass Bay. We were still excited to be out in the nature, and see the rock formation and plants that all look very foreign to us. We also spotted a wallaby (related to kangaroos), our first Aussie local animal.
Even more than the national park I loved looking through the van window at the countryside on the way there. Golden meadows, lonely trees and rugged coast lines were breathtakingly beautiful - I would have wanted to stop the car every two minutes to take pictures of everything around us.

In addition to the food for the eyes, we stopped at Kate's Berry Farm near Swansea for some fuel for our bellies. Oh my god, I've never tasted anything as tasty as the mingleberry pie with ice cream here. Still now two weeks later when I'm writing this, I get an urge to jump on the plane and fly there just to taste that pie again. Mom, please bake some from me when I come home!
On Saturday we went to the infamous Salamanca Market in Hobart. It was a huge, outdoor market place selling all kinds of stuff from food to tools to clothing. Can't believe how cheap we are, but we had a very nice mid-morning snack trying all the free tasters there: home-baked chocolate cookies, ten different types of fudge, jams, berries, bread... they all were SO good. I had some lovely English-style beef&bacon filled pie for lunch. If there was a market like this in my town (wherever that is) I would go there every weekend.

We've also discovered other money-saving ideas, such as how to get to use free internet. The backpacker magazine TNT has coupons for all kinds on freebies and discounts, including at 15-minute internet coupon for our Hobart hostel. They're supposed to allow only one use per customer per stay. Well, what do you think we do when there's a stash of these magazines in the hostel lounge, and different people working at the reception every day? Let's say we got to go online as much as we wanted to.

We did another tour on Monday, visiting the former penal colony in Port Arthur, where the English shipped their prisoners to in the 19th century. The former prison complex was actually a small village for the prisoners, soldiers and other civilians who worked there. They had fantastic exhibitions about how life was like back then and how people lived. We got to go inside the prisons and also the homes of the people who lived there, and heard interesting stories about the convicts who tried to escape. The place still had a bit creepy atmosphere, and I was sad to hear how the people were treated, whether they had done something to deserve it or not. All of it was really interesting though. It's hard to imagine that the whole of Tasmania used to be a prison (nowadays there's just one on the island), and that every Tasmanian is related to at least one convict.

On this very informative tour we also got to know stuff about the history of the aborigines. There have been aborigines in Australia for 40 000 to 60 000 years (depends on the source). The scientists still haven't found out how they got there. If they sailed here 60 000 years ago from Indonesia or East Timor and started a colony, that would have been tens of thousands of years before any other humans on Earth were developed enough to build any boats for seafaring. It's not possible that their race could've developed independently from the humans in Africa, because there were no monkeys on the island to develop from. And on top of that, they also had the skills to survive in this harsh country, in deserts and everything. (Yes, I have been reading Bill Bryson's Down Under, a super interesting and funny book that I'd recommend to anyone interested in Australia.)

The aborigines walked to the Tasmania from Australia when the island still had a land connection to the mainland. After that, they have been alone for 12 000 years. I can't even understand how long that is. It is the longest time a group of people have been isolated in human history. When the white people came to Tasmania in the early 19th century, it took only 70 years for the local aborigines to become extinct, being killed by English people or dying of the foreign diseases they brought with them. Can you imagine having a place for yourself for thousands of years, and then losing everything in just a few decades?

On Tuesday it was time to fly back to Melbourne. We thought we would be fine taking a later airport shuttle bus, but after all only got to the airport less than an hour before hour flight, quite stressed wondering whether we would make it to the flight or not. It would've been fine, as our flight was 2,5 hours late (Jetstar's whole schedule was messed up because of a broken plane). Thanks to this, we only got to Melbourne just before midnight...

Sydney pictures

Here are a few pictures from Sydney. I will put up more pics on Facebook later.

Lazing around in a park, listening to an English guy Luca playing guitar.

Pick-your-own sea shells, only 22 000 dollars!

Beaches are dangerous.

THE Opera House.

Food for eyes on Bondi.

This fellow was about 10cm from toe to toe - the biggest one we've found so far.
Harbour at night.

Sydney Skyline from Botanical Gardens.
Sunset in Darling Harbour.
This is all my stuff for 5 months. Backpack only 11kg!
Australia is lethal.

Big lizard on our hiking track.

First steps Down Under

It took about 32 hours to get from my mother's front door to our hostel in Sydney. Three flights and two "nights" of sleep after our departure we arrived at Wake Up!. The hostel is located right next to the central railway station, which is very convenient for getting around the city. The place is pretty clean and has a nice kitchen and comfy rooms. We are staying in a 10 bed dorm with some completely mental Canadians, whose company we haven't really enjoyed: they are drunk all the time, wake us up 2-3 times per night and during the day as well if we manage to nap a little (which we have done a lot, trying to imitate koalas, I suppose). For example, this morning we had the pleasure to wake up to two people having sex in the bottom bunk. From this description one might guess that we haven't slept that well, so we're actually really happy to leave the hostel today and to get rid of these people.

Apart from interesting experiences when trying to sleep, we have enjoyed being in Sydney quite a lot. We have visited most of the outdoor sights in the city centre (somehow we end up in Circular Quay every day - the harbour just is so pretty), and did some hikes in Manly and from Bondi beach to Coogee. The sun is sooo strong - despite wearing sun screen, we've both managed to get some sun burns. I've succumbed to wearing a not-very-stylish side-ponytail because my right ear got burned so badly...

I've been so happy to get to hang out with my old Hong Kong best friend Amira, who moved to Sydney just a month ago to do a Master's degree. Through her, we have got the chance to meet some local people, in addition to other international students. We have had some great nights in having dinner, as well as visited some Cremorne pubs and a Darling Harbour restaurant.

We have been trying to be careful with money, because we're both on a quite low budget. The euro-dollar exchange rate is horrible, so everything is sooo expensive. For example, a big carton of yogurt costs the equivalent of 4 euros, and Inka has bought some avocados for more than 2 euros a piece. Luckily, we have managed to find some much cheaper store brands in the supermarket, and can make an affordable existence by cooking most of our meals ourselves.

Sydney seems to be a very cosmopolitan city: there are people from all over the world. Everybody's good-looking, fit and well-dressed. The people are, in general, quite wealthy, and seem to enjoy the outdoorsy enjoy, at least judging by their tan. Apart from the central business district with the skyscrapers, the buildings are pretty low. I'm used to seeing mostly apartment block in cities of this size, but actually it looks like most people live in houses, even in the suburbs closest to the city centre.

What also strucks me is the difference between the architecture of Sydney and Europe. It's very clearly visible that the city is only two hundred years old, as all the buildings are very modern. They are pleasing to the eye, but not very pretty. It feels like the city lacks history, when everywhere you looks there's just steel and concrete (there are some slightly older neighbourhoods like The Rocks, that have a bit more character though). It's also very clean everywhere - so much so that I start to miss graffitis and street art that we have so much of in Europe.

We have had very pleasant, although lazy, six days in Sydney. I wrote most of this on Tuesday afternoon in a Sydney library, where I got myself a reader's card just to be able to use internet for free. In the evening we caught a Greyhound nightbus to our next stop on the way, Melbourne. During the 12-hour train ride we actually slept almost better than in the hostel, as it was sooo nice and quiet.

We're in Melbourne now. Staying for one night though, to celebrate the Irish event St Patrick's Day, before we fly over to Tasmania island tomorrow.

Sydney pictures will follow in a later blog entry, because our hostel's computer doesn't want to transfer my photos now.

Aussie specialties spotted so far:
- huge spiders
- hot surfer boys
- kangaroo meat burgers (haven't seen living kangaroos yet)
- bluebottle fish warning signs on beaches

Ready to go

I'm leaving to Australia in less than two hours. I'm planning to stay in the country for almost five months (return flight booked for 2nd August). My travel companion for the first month is my friend Inka, whom I've known since we were 13 and in the same class in secondary school. The following four months I'll be on my own.

"I" am a 22-year-old Finnish student, having a well-deserved gap year between my Bachelor and Master's degrees. I went to study economics and business administration to a Finnish university straight after high school, and after graduating recently, was desperate to do something not involving books or class rooms. I've been an incurable travel addict for a few years now, so when Inka offered to accompany me to Australia, I only considered not accepting for about 30 seconds.

During my studies I spent one semester doing a student exchange program in Hong Kong and travelling in Eastern and South-East Asia, altogether for five months. After finishing my Bachelor studies in the spring 2009, I spent 9 months doing an internship in Germany. (In my profile you can find my blogs from those periods, unfortunately only in Finnish.) Therefore, the trip to Down Under will be my third longer stay abroad, and my first time on the Southern side of the Equator.

Many people have asked where in Australia I'm going. Usually my answer has been a vague "everywhere". Actually, I do have an approximate travel plan, trying to make the most out of my 5 months, knowing that I won't have time to stop for more than max 2 weeks in one place, and that I still won't see everything.
I placed the cities on the map without checking, so try not to mind if they are 1000 kilometers off from where they should be...

- The first month I'm going to spend with Inka on the purple route, heading south from Sydney to Melbourne and Tasmania, driving up the coast to Adelaide, and flying to the red centre to visit Uluru and Alice Springs, returning to Sydney in the end so that Inka can fly back home.
- The following 1,5-2 months I've received for the green route up the East Coast. I'm planning to buy a Greyhound bus pass, to have 45 days time to travel from Sydney up to Cairns.
- The third, yellow bit will be the West Coast. I'm planning to fly over to Perth from Cairns, and head up north along the coastline all the way to Darwin. This can take 1,5-2months as well.


Wikipedia summarizes the role I have in mind:

"Beach bum is a term used to denote a subculture, the characteristics of which often include aspects of but do not necessarily extend to the surfer, the stoner or the hippie subcultures. The members of this subculture are typically ocean and beach-going people who enjoy spending spare time sitting or relaxing on a beach. As such, the life of a beach bum is usually one of leisure. This holds true if the particular beach bum is a local, a retiree, a vacationer, or just someone who enjoys life by the ocean.
Not to be confused with naked buttocks on a nude beach."

And what I'm planning to do? Enjoy it. Be outdoors on the beaches and cities and mountains, try new things such as surfing and diving. Meet new people. Make memories. And of course take loads of pictures (if my not-insured camera doesn't break down nor get stolen, fingers crossed).

I'll try to update this blog whenever the three forces (time, energy and internet access) meet. You can also follow me on Facebook.

English is not my first language. I wanted to move away from blogging only in Finnish because I wanted to offer my foreign friends a chance to follow my journey. Language enthusiasts, please feel free to post comments correcting my language, I'm happy to learn more!