I came back to Perth Sunday night having 2 big missions: visiting Perth Mint (because Erez said it was a must) and finding lift / travel mates to go north together. Monday was almost fully spent on that task (and in the meantime I also extended my visa to Australia to end of August!). After visiting some backpackers and checking their notice boards, I came back to my own hostel just to discover there was a British girl sitting in the cafe there and she was looking for the same thing! The rest of the day was spent on renting a [View Full Entry]

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Some of you have done it, but I know some of my readers have never travelled as backpackers. For you I present a special post: the little details of my life as a backpacker, in case you have wondered how it's like behind attractions, scenic drives and wine. Accomodation Most of the nights I sleep in a shared room (dorms). This means that I sleep with people I don't know. In Australia you can always get a girls only dorm which is really good - it's usually less smelly and noisy (sorry guys :-). Of course you can have great neighbors [View Full Entry]

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On Thursday morning I took off for a long drive, about 500km, to the town of Esperance. On the way I stopped in the Stirling Ranges - beautiful mountains not far from Albany. I did a short hike there, couldn't afford more before the long drive I had before me. Still it was really nice to walk a little again. Did I mention already how like I was with the weather?? This all week since I arrived to Western Australia was so beautiful. And so I continued the long way, stopping for fuel, body fueling (ice cream and lime diet coke [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday morning I went to visit an Aboriginal cultural center (called "Warden"), as a part of my growing interest in their culture and history. I had a private tour as I was there alone. The guide is also the guy that built the place - an Aboroginal that grew up in the bush in a traditional way but still holds a university degree in business. He told me a lot about how the British massacured the Aboriginals - I don't know whether to believe his numbers (he said that something between 3-5 millions were killed by the British), but I [View Full Entry]

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I decided not to wait to find a travel mate for the trip south from Perth. It's supposed to be a relatively short one (about 2500 km only :-) and I found a ca for 25$ a day only, which is really cheap, so I head off south on my own. It's really different and it's nice to be by myself for a change, to have real privacy. On Sunday I drove south to the area of Margaret River. I visited one cave on the way (Ngilgi cave) which was nice. My best memory from the cave is my chat with [View Full Entry]

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When I just came here I thought Aboriginal were really primitive. The only thing I knew about them was that they are playing music with this strange tool called didgeridoo that makes very boring music. I guess the first European settlers had even more extreme opinions, seeing them walking around almost naked and using very primitive tools. But when you take a bit deeper look (and not too deep) you understand that with their primitive methods they survived in the harsh lands of Australia, often dry, not much rain, and plenty of dangers around. They had their law that they passed [View Full Entry]

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Friday morning started early again, this time to catch a flight to Peth. This was one of the funniest flights I ever had. I sat next to two German backpacker girls, one of them in my age, an impressive woman that built her own startup in the IT business. However, we didn’t discuss business. Our raw was the party raw in the plane. It was fun. At the end we had a photo with the pilot! I spent the last two days in Perth mainly thinking and planning my trips in the west coast and I almost didn’t have time to [View Full Entry]

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I planned one day of relaxing in the pool in Alice after the long desert trip, but as you know me already, it didn’t happen. I discovered that there were a few interesting places in Alice. Mainly, I visited two places that provide services we are very accustomed to, but in a unique way as they serve a community distributed over a vast area. The first place is called “School of the air”. The school teaches 114 kids that live in an area of 1.3M sq km, where there are less than 10 kids in the same area. Most of them [View Full Entry]

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In the last day of the tour we visited one of the nicest spots - Kings Canyon. It's about 3 hour hike around the canyon. The pictures will tell the story better than words. It's simply a beautiful place in the middle of a desert. After a long 500km drive we reached Alice Springs, and celebrated the end of the tour at Toddy's all you can eat buffet. Later everybody went for drinks but I felt I drunk way too much the last 8 days, and got an early sleep for a change. The bottom line, this camping tour was really [View Full Entry]

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I first saw Uluru in sunset, Sunday evening. The first time I have heard of this place was about 8 years ago, in one of the travel magazines I used to read. I remember thinking that I will never get there: Australia is so far and even if I do get there, the rock is so far from anywhere else. But that Sunday I was standing there in front of this piece of rock and I was simply amazed. It's one rock! It's so big! Of course I wasn't alone there. Thousands of tourists shared the experience with me. But who [View Full Entry]

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