Roadtrip report #01

As my journey continues to keep goin good, I managed to create a photo weblog on flickr for you.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelheiml/

The last couple of weeks turned out to be a waveriding between awful and awesome; met some nice people, met some stupid one’s… seen some beautiful places and some dumps. I’ll try to give you a short overview about what happened since I left Perth on the 25th of June! (For all you Austrians, this email goes to a couple of not-german-native-speakers as well, therefore internationalisation “attempt” ).

Sydney. A couple of days ago, I was on a scenic flight in a small Cessna over Sydney when we had an emergency in about 4000 meters height (About 14000 ft.). We had to leave the plane since it began to shake and stall, and as I jumped out of it, I had about 1 minute freefall, followed by about 10 minutes parachuting. It scared the hell out of me, as you can guess. The first some seconds of acceleration felt … amazing! I had enough time to watch a 260 degree surounding picture of Sydney before we hit the ground. Fortunatley, I already had a parachute, including a guy experienced with skydiving, hooked up onto my back, and yes, the plane didn’t have an emergency (and Bobs your uncle)… but nevertheless, it was absolutley FANTASTIC and I suggest everyone to do a skydive!

Of course, when you visit Sydney, there’s no way around the Opera House (and with it, the Harbour Bridge). I stayed in Sydney with Marte and Sindre for a couple of days, and of course, filmed the “First Contact” with this breath-taking piece of architecture (Didn’t thought so, but it is, indeed). But not enough, I met a guy from the UK who stayed in the same hostel dorm (David), and on the last day we spent there, we managed to get 2 tickets for a performance in the Opera House. The story on how we got those tickets might be considered by one as being a bit of a piece of luck. David and me decided about 1 hour before it started to go there and ask for tickets for the already 2 weeks before booked-out performance “Symphonies of the movies”. Of course, there were no tickets left. But about 5 minutes before the start, there was one ticket free, but for about 80 dollars, which was simply too expensive (and sadly only one…), so we turned around, but as we were about to leave, the woman selling the tickets came after us, telling us we get another ticket for free in case we take the one for 80 bucks, and of course, we did! So there it happened, a gigantic, absolutley amazing 2 1/2 hours orchestra playing a lot of those great movie symphonies (among them Bliss, Prokofiev, Williams with some great themes like from Star Wars & Trek, Psycho, Eisenstein classics and so on). I really loved this performance, and according to his big smile after it, I guess David did so as well. Even though it wasn’t allowed to record anything, I managed to tape the whole inscenation of “Star Trek Main Theme – First Contact”. I try to post it on my homepage as soon as I get a cable to connect the camera to the laptop (Me idiot, left it behind in Perth).

Well, and there were of course all these other things tourists are carried to while in Sydney. And I consider it to be not the worst idea to go with the tourist flow while in Syndey. This city is just … Great. In short words: Colorful, busy all day and night, pulsating, heaps of young people and backpackers. Definitley a place to go in Australia. While I stayed there for 7 days, I visited the Botanic Gardens, finally managed to touch a Koala in the Zoo, walked underneath sharks, visited Darling Harbour for several times, stayed one day at Manly Beach (The name is derived from the fact that the first sailors who landed at Sydneys first discovered beach saw an aboriginal guy waiving from the beach, apparently a man, so they called the beach “manly” beach… pretty mind-free, if you ask me), visited the Maritime Museum of the Australian Military (btw, thats where this famous ANZAC day celebration comes from… means “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps” in the first World War). Done a one-day trip to the Blue Mountains, a big National Park, with a beautiful, but exhausting bushwalk through the jungle, a wine tasting tour (well the wine wasn’t too good…), and – ! – saw a Tassi Devil in the zoo (Award-winner for the most grumpiest facial expression of all animals). Fortunatley, on the first day in Sydney, there was this big Coffee Festival at the Darling Harbour (It was organized by the Sydney Coffee university or something like that) – and for gods sake, yes! – there were heaps of coffee shops at the beach, each capp for one buck, like in paradise. Sindre , Marte and Grumpy-Bumpy (who’s that?) sadly left on the 3rd day, finally to go back to Norway… and maybe, I don’t know, but I hope I see you guys again! Well, and Sydneys nightlife also wanted to be discovered… so not to forget drinking some beers at night … Greetz Hanna, David and Richie!

Useless knowledge part 1: The Australian Flag shows the Southern Cross, a star constellation sailors used to navigate in this area ages ago. And the Australian sign show the Kangaroo and the Emuu, the worlds only 2 animals that can NOT walk backwards (wow, how metaphoric!).

OZEX. Before I arrived in Sydney, I travelled down from Brisbane with the so-called OZ Experience tour. We were all together 8 days on the road, and I met a couple of nice guys there as well (Greetings to Lara and David!). Coincidentally, I bumped into Marte and Sindre who also went down from Cairns on the same tour, we stayed in the same hostel in Byron Bay, where we had a biking tour together and some afternoons at nice beaches (Well, and of course, drinking . The tour was pretty well alternating, we stayed in Nimbim for a couple of hours, not too far north of Byron Bay. It is said to be the Hippie retreat of the world, and apparently, it is. In this small city, you can buy cookies and weed on every street corner, and when you sit in a coffee shop, people around you smoke weed like if police doesnt exist in this world (Actually, they dont, since the Australian government kind of accepts this retreat to be unique and they let the people there do what they want). Well, and of course, David (a guy from Switzerland) and me … erhm … bought something to eat there… and we ate… It took quite a while, but when we arrived in Byron Bay that night, the smile in our faces were quite big, I guess. One day, we stayed in Barrington Sunrock Retreat (Hey to all you World of Warcraft players, this place really exists!), right in the middle of nowhere. Sindre, Marte and me joined a night river rafting tour… well we at least had a guide and a headlight mounted on our foreheads when driving down this bumpy shaking river… on one place, we turned the lights off at all and let us go with the water flow, watching the bright sky… great feeling! While I got stuck on one rock, Sindre bumped into me with his Kajak, and Marte managed to turn around at all at one of this waterfalls *gg* the water had only 4 degrees, to mention it. But luckily, nothing happened and we heated ourselves up in a 40 degree thermal water bath, which felt quite burning the first few seconds… and, we had our beer in the 24-people bathtube … right at midnight, a Oppossum decided to join our drinking session, which ended up with this stupid animal sitting on a big old tree next to the bathtube, without knowing how to get down again. At least, we had a chance to take a picture of this ugly thing.

Brisbane. Well, in short words: Dump. Probably a little bit to add, but not much. I stayed there for 3 days, 2 days to long as far as I consider. 2 girls from Germany who I got to know in Fiji before stayed with me in a small, but quite nice hostel and we managed to see the more important part of the city in.. some hours ??? Well, at least I visited the Museum of engineering (Not sure if that is the correct name), the house of nature, the botanic gardens and an aboriginal arts exibition. At the second night, there was this rugby match (Australia vs. South Africa) that took place in Brisbane, and the Australians where quite drunken and aggressive, even if they won about 36:0 … I was in a pub this night (for all you people from Perth: It was also called “The Mustang” and it looked exactly the same as the one in Perth), and for some reason, some people enjoyed slamming their fist into others peoples faces as soon as the match was over… Well I was pretty drunken this night so I was already kind of knocked-out even without getting a slap in my face.

Fiji. Before I came to Brisbane, I stayed in Fiji (more precise: on the Yasawa Islands) for almost 2 weeks, first day with Judith, and the last couple of days with Rein and some Germans I got to know. Originally, Rein and me wanted to spend the whole time there together, but Rein managed to be forced to stay in New Zealand at the Auckland airport for all together 5 nights because of an invalid visa, but I dont want to spoil all of the story about his amazing experience there, he should do it by himself (Good job, Mr. deBoer!). Nevertheless, I had the so-called Bula-Pass (God, I cant hear the word Bula anymore. Its the fijian word for Hello and everyone, really everyone uses it all the time, even if you saw the same person just 2 minutes ago) which enabled me to jump between approximatley 20 islands as often as I liked to, which I did … The islands themselves were pretty small (someone can walk around the whole smallest island in about 15 minutes) and I visited 5 of them. Well, what should I tell you about small idyllic pacific islands that you dont already know or assume? Lying around in the hammok, beaches as far as the eye can see, sand, sand, and… sand, coconuts waiting on the palm tree to be shot down (Which I successfully did, the first time it took me about 1 hour to open one of those damn things, the next time I had an instructor and it took me about 5 minutes for the same result. Unfortunatley, I hunted for the coconut togehter with a german couple on their honeymoon who I got to know in Fiji, and when the guy shot down one of the coconuts, it – of course, like in a fairytale – hit the head of his woman precisely, but luckily nothing serious happened, just a small wound on her forehead). Well most of the daytime, I read my now-new favourite book, Alexis Sorbas (Also known as Zorba the Greek), a recommendable piece of paper for daydreamers and the rest of the world. In Fiji, the locals use to drink their own kind of drug, the so-called “Karva” which makes someone feel really dizzy and both the cheeks and the tounge start to “sleep”… looks pretty funny when someone drinks about 15 cups of Karva and after one hour, the tounge of this person hangs out of his mouth, unable to move. What really everyone who visited Fiji noticed was that the locals try to make money really out of everything. So for instance, we all had to pay 3 dollars each to watch the worldcup final on TV (and I taped an italian guy who started to cry after the penalty shooting, as well as a couple of french guys who also started to cry). One day, when I needed to book an accommodation on another island, I asked at the reception for help. The very polite woman of course helped me, but she “forgot” to mention that each call with the WALKIE TALKIE (!!!) to another island resort was 2 dollars charge (Hm I ask myself for what someone has to pay when using walkie talkies, probably the battery discharge or what??) – nevertheless, I really had to pay about 10 bucks after she managed to book a new accommodation for me. There are a lot of these money rip off stories in fiji, but I think this is the most representative one. Not so nice. Enough complaining, besides these things I visited the Blue Lagune (Yes, where the movie was shot), did some coral riff snorkeling, visited some locals tribes, was almost forced to buy some necklaces in exchange for “free” coffee, swam around in shallow water (to cut my feet as the water went back), watched some beach beauties doing their usual undressing and positioning processes on the beach to gain attention from everywhere and everyone, danced the so-called “Bula-Dance” (once again) with locals (which, apparently, has more to do with a kind of kindergarden dance than a real dance), and so on and so on. Oh yeah, and not to forget, got to know nice people from Melbourne, the UK and Scotland, had a couple of drinks with them, one night the drinking was a bit too much (good so!), and so on…

Auckland. Spent 4 days there at the place of a study mate from back home, Helena. Auckland has something in common with Brisbane. I guess they both try to get the crown for being called Dump or so (for my study mates, Helena can tell heaps of things more about that, her report about Auckland basically says enough). Nevertheless, we visited the recommendable Waiheke Island, the Auckland Graveyard (yes!), and a couple of other more or less nice places. Well, of course, Skytower was also on the list, but the height doesnt make Auckland much more beautiful, even if it was night. The skytower itself is a monumentum of uglyness by itself, the architect of it should be banned to Pluto or somewhere else where he cannot damage any cityskyline again. Overall, Auckland looks like if the former Sovjet Union has banned all its worst architects to a penalty colony on New Zealand that got to be known as Auckland later in history (Probably inspired by the Hichhikers Guide). Even the coffee culture is pretty underdeveloped. Well, Helena and me went to the movies 2 times, just to make things worse – “Mistress of Spices” and “X-Men 3″ are movies that you definitley dont want to see, or only if you want to see red chillie placed very unsubtle for a hundred times like in Mistress of Spices. Well, once on this road of desperation, we thought a visit in the theatre can finally bring some light into darkness, but the performance “Me and my brother are pornstars” was just another stop on the way down the darking street (Hope that description makes sense). Okay, okay, but there were some good things in Auckland as well, for instance Helenas house, which was probably the most amazing building I have ever seen, in case it was intended to be like that. Basically, the whole house stood like 5 degrees uneven, it was colder inside the building than outside, the walls were wet and smelt like hell, and the rooms didnt have heater at all. In case that house wasnt intended to be like a house of horror, I vote for the same fate to its architect than the one for the drunken Skytower guy. But looking back, the Waiheke Island, the wine-evenings including some nice conversations with Helena and this all-together so ugly city made it to a pretty unique experience one should make (But do yourself the favour and dont stay longer than 1 night in Auckland itself).

Useless knowledge part 2: CCCP is just written in cyrillic and means SSSR, translated into the roman alphabet. SSSR itself means Sojus Sovjetskitsch Sozialistik Respublica, or that at least sounds like that when spoken out.

Queenstown. Completly the opposite of Auckland, this tiny cute town on the Southern New Zealand island is situated in an awesome surrounding. Marte, Rein, Sindre and me stayed there for a couple of days and enjoyed being together there. We drove around the scenic streets to Wanaka Lake with a rental car (Heh, the guy from the company said its not allowed to smoke inside the car, but since he cannot control if or if I not smoke inside, it doesnt matter for him – is an absolute representative for the layed-back attitude of the people there), visited some of the LotR locations in Queenstown, and so on. One of the best things I did so far on my journey was a guided daytrip with one of these small 4-wheel motorcylces (quadbike?) throughout the surrounding hills… got really down and dirty here, but was pretty amazing to drive, jump, race through the dirt with it. There was also a small frozen lake which we used to do some turning and driftings with those small but bloody fast bikes on the ice. In Wanaka, we visited a puzzle museum which used up quite much of our brain juice. Oh yeah, and it was damn freezing cold (about 2cm) so we had to buy some so-called long johns (erhm, underwear). Yes, and we had some drinks in a bar, and there something I really never would expect happened… this stupid DJ really managed to play a tune from an austrian pop-clown, DJ Ötzi. Well, the people from back home can guess how much I “enjoyed” listening to “Hey Baby” 14000 kilometers away from Austria.

The last couple of days in Perth of course were filled with spilled heartblood since everyone left, one after another. Had some good good-bye parties the last few days. Almost everyone bought an Australian flag or something similar to sign, and all those obligate things happened when people have to say good-by. I must admit that I miss the time in Perth and the people I got to know there. The first few days after leaving Perth on the 25th of June felt quite strange and empty, of course. I wanted to thank all of you guys for making the time in Perth for that what it was – it wouldn’t have been like that without you!

Useless knowledge part 3: Judith and me managed to visit Bon Scotts grave in a small city next to Perth, Freemantle (Which was on a Sunday evening in Dawn, so it was very scary *hehe*… For all non-ACDC fans, Bon Scott was the former singer of the band before he killed himself by falling asleep from a big drinking night and dying from his own throw-out).

Right now, I’m sitting in a hostel in Devonport, in the northern territory of Tasmania, where I stay the next week, going down to Hobart with a hiking tour. I travelled to Tasmania with the so-called Spirit of Tasmania ferry and got a little bit sick from all the movement on the ship (The sea was quite rough, so that one other person in my room on the ship even felt out of his bed). Devonport is a quiet place, and one of Tasmania’s first settlements. Today I spent most of the time running around in the city and at the beach to see some of these old buildings here in the town centre. Tomorrow morning I’ll leave for the so-called “Under Down Under” Tour. I hope I can manage to send this mail before I go on the bus, otherwise the writings here might not be too up-to-date I hope I see a Tassi Devil in real nature here at least once (Does anyone know anything else about Tasmania than this stupid grumpy animal?).

Anyway, when I finally arrive back in Perth at the end of august, I’ll try and write another report on how the rest of the journey turned out to be, and meanwhile I will try to upload some more pics onto flickr whenever internet access is avaliable.

Useless knowledge part 4: Got to know some new english slang expressions, for instance “half a dozen of one and 6 of the other” or “up your bum”. The favourite german-to-english direct translated expressions still are: “He makes himself, me nothing, you nothing, out of the dust” (Thanks to Hannes!) and “You have a shot in your apricot”.

To all the people where our way split up in Perth, I still think of you, hope to stay in touch and might see some of you again in future,
I hope the unit 17 housemouse made it well so far,
and to everyone else I will see again soon back home, I’m looking forward to do so (Well, there were and there still are lots of moments where I miss you guys and when I think of seeing you again it makes me feeling happy, too)!!

with a special greeting to
The United States of America
and
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

hugs,
the still-the-best disgusting-grumpy Mafia player in the whole known universe (and beyond, where no one has gone before),

Michael