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Videos from our trip in Australia finally are ready to be enjoyed on Khrystube.

In Australia there was no way we would have missed the Great Barrier Reef. But we didn’t have a clue which was the best place to visit this over 2000 kilometer long natural wonder from. You can get to the reef at least from Cairns, Mackay and Port Douglas. With few recommendations we quite randomly picked Port Douglas. Later we were very happy for this, as these three places are very different. Port Douglas is small village, relaxing holiday destination. Cairns is bigger, but nice town. We didn’t like Mackay from what we saw driving through it. Big city, where it was even hard to find the beach.

We spent a whole week in Port Douglas relaxing and enjoying good sea food. The beach there was long and nice, but unfortunately we were not able to swim because of the dangerous box jellyfish, which may be present in North Queensland waters between November and May/June. But we had few swimming pools at the hotel. We were not very lucky with the weather though, and it was mostly cloudy and rainy. Waiting for weather to get better so that the trips to the reef could be run, we took a crocodile cruise on a Port Douglas river. One crocodile gave a good show attacking fishes.
   
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Snorkeling/diving on the reef was definitely one of the best experiences on our trip. It takes few hours to get to the reef by boat, and costs close to 200 euros per person just to snorkel, so we could not go there more than once. During the day we visited three different spots on the reef. Jonas and Chris were diving, and Netta snorkeling. We saw so many different kind of colourful fish and coral. Among the cool fishes were clown fishes (the orange ones from Finding Nemo movie) and huge Napoleon Maori Wrasses. One of the most amazing things were massive clams, which were at least 1-2 meters wide. Surprisingly Netta was the most lucky when it comes to sharks, and managed to see one twice. Small harmless reef sharks, but impressive and special anyway.
Our waterproof camera broke while on the reef, so we had to buy pictures taken by professional photograph. Good souvenirs, as they are very good quality.
   
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After Jonas went back to Sweden, we had to get to Brisbane, as our next flight was from there. The flights were quite expensive at the moment (even though normally it is cheaper to fly within Australia than go by bus/rental car). We still had 10 days left, so we thought it would be good to drive and see more of the country. Found a great deal and got to drive a camper van from Cairns to Brisbane just for the price of petrol and extra insurance. The requirement was that we had to drive the 1740 kilometres in four days. Netta drove by herself as Chris’s drivers licence got lost in Tasmania. We wanted to see the real outback, but as it was too far away and we were limited with kilometres, we took the straightest coast road through banana plantations, sugar cane fields, savannahs and beautiful beaches. Many locals seemed to think that we drive crazy long distances, but people were very friendly and helpful when asking for directions.
   
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We seem to have been lucky, as when we arrived in Brisbane, they told us that the previous days Brisbane had had the worst rains and floods in decades. People didn’t get to their homes as some roads were closed. When we stayed in Brisbane there was still heavy rains and floods in the surrounding areas, but we saw it only on TV.
Nice finish for our stay in Australia was that we got to see and have dinner with Leonie and Andrew whom we met in Bolivia.
   
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We managed to get right on time to Sydney for my 30th birthday.
I went to hair dresser and finally got that dress the previous day. Wanted to look a bit nicer at least as I normally don’t put any make up or do anything for my hair while traveling. We took a better hotel next to the opera house, and enjoyed the sunny day in Sydney’s wonderful Botanical Garden. It is the most beautiful park/garden we’ve ever seen. There is loads of different trees and flowers, and on the trees hangs hundreds of interesting orange bats. Even though we didn’t go around the whole of the city, Sydney is our favourite out of big cities on the east coast. There we got jealous for Australian people who can enjoy the sun all year round and jog in a park whenever. But of course they have to be very careful with the sun too, Australia has the highest amount of skin cancer cases in the world.
   
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In the evening I got a bottle of sparkling wine from a nice couple from Perth, who I met at the swimming pool. We had very tasty dinner, tried kangaroo, crocodile and emu meat. Didn’t party all night, too old for that ;). Luckily Chris and Jonas didn’t drop me from the plane or anything like that as I had feared.

After yummy blueberry cheesecake next morning we needed some excercise and headed to the Blue Mountains close to Sydney. It was slow to get there as the route run through suburbs and many villages, but also because of the many roadworks, which we felt there’s been everywhere in Australia and New Zealand.
In the impressive blue mountains we did few hikes in Wentworth and Katoomba.
   
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Then back to the coast. One hostel owner had told us that his hometown Forster is the most beautiful place in the world, so we headed there. It was a nice, peaceful place with clear water sandy beach. Walking by the boats we spotted our first ever dolphins in the nature. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to stay laying on the beach as we had to keep driving in order to catch our flight to the Great Barrier Reef on time. On the way we still stopped on the easternmost point of Australia’s mainland, Byron Bay, and later in the evening in Surfer’s Paradise, which reminds of Miami.
   
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From Tasmania we returned to Melbourne, from where we rented a car, planning to drive to Brisbane in ten days. Melbourne is a nice city, with a good mixture of old and new buildings. They have restaurants from all over the world, and shopping possibilities are tempting. I wanted to buy a dress, and spent a day going around shops while the guys visited Melbourne aquarium. Even though I’m not a big shopper, it’s a shame sometimes that we cannot buy many things as we don’t have extra space in the bags. For us shopping would be cheaper almost in all the other countries than back home. Luckily (for Chris :)) I don’t understand nowadays fashion, so most of the time I don’t even find anything to buy. The same happened with the dress, almost everything in Melbourne was too short, so they got to stay in shops. Streets in Melbourne look half Asian, as there is loads of people with Asian origin and Asian restaurants.

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From Melbourne we headed first south to Phillip island to see little blue penguins. We had seen them already by glimpse in New Zealand and in Tasmania, but the difference here would be that we would see hundreds of them. Phillip island is famous for spectacular “Penguin parade”, where you can watch hundreds of penguins climbing ashore to their nests from the sea. This experience was truly amazing. All of a sudden tens of little heads pop up from the sea. They start to walk pass us. The same happens again and again and again. At least ten times. They are hundreds, even thousands. It’s very quiet. The penguins walk pass us one by one, and we get to see them from one meter away. When they get to their nests to their partners, they start to keep funny noise. Some of them get into a fight as there might have been an intruder in the nest while the partner was away, and it is unclear who the nest belongs to. We are wondering why the penguins still nest here, even though hundreds of people watch them every night, and the most stupid ones keep noise and shout to the animals. Perhaps they don’t have a choice, and they are used to people by now. (Luckily) it was not allowed to take pictures of the penguins, so we still don’t have one to show you. This thing you have to come and experience yourselves! :) In Phillip island we also went to a big protected area to see supercute koalas again. They look so much like big stuffed animals. As their food, eucalyptus leaves, contain so few energy, they don’t move much and sleep 20 hours a day!

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On the way to Brisbane we wanted to see also something else besides the beaches, so we went to check if we could find any snow in Australia in their alpine area. At first it seemed quite unlikely, as we did not see anything even close to mountains. Then we had to believe that there has to be some snow as we got to a closed road, closed because it had been snowing a week(!) ago. There was another way through the alps so we were able to go on, just it would have been nice to hear about the road closure from the tourist information office which specifically recommended the way in question…
This caused us to drive extra 80 kilometres on a winding road, but luckily we got to a still empty skiing resort before dark. Made few snow balls and took some pictures. That was enough for us up there as it was so cold, and we started to long for a tropical heat.

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Our good friend Jonas from Sweden joined us in Australia for four weeks of holidays. After meeting him in Melbourne we wanted to have a look at Tasmania (Tassie, as the locals call it), as we had heard that the nature is really nice there. We took a plane, as it is surprisingly a lot cheaper and faster than to go by ferry. We decided to stay in Tasmania only for four days, as we had five weeks in total in Australia, and in that time one can see only tiny part of this huge country.

In Tasmania we first celebrated the birthday of Jonas in the capital Hobart, traditionally in an Irish pub.
Next day we headed to Bruny Island down from Hobart. First evening there we saw our first wallabies, brown and white ones. It was really cool, there was tens of them and they came to the camping area just few meters from us. Well, we first thought the brown ones were kangaroos, as these animals look very much alike, but later heard from locals what they were. The very same evening, we also got to see a few blue penguins. Once again, we couldn’t take pictures because of the dark.

Next day we went to an animal park to see the endangered Tasmanian devils. Those guys can be really vicious towards each other, but can also look cute (when they are sleeping). In the park we also saw kangaroos, koalas, wombats, echidnas. They are all sooooo cute! Even though Netta doesn’t normally love animals that much, the boys had to almost carry her out as she could have stayed there for ages.

There are many national parks in Tasmania. We had time to have a hike in three of them on the east coast, South Bruny-, Freycinet-, and Douglas-Apsley National Parks. The hikes were very nice and landscapes special. On the last hike half of the path was along an almost dried, rocky river and we got to jump from rock to rock, that was fun. Landscape along the road was also quite interesting, with cliffs, blow holes, rocky arches, sand and rock beaches …

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