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Published: February 20th 2010
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After exploring Sydney, it was time to explore more of Australia. I rented a car for a month and would drive it from Sydney, all the way North along the East Coast to Cairns, about 2500km.
Sydney lies in the state of New South Wales, and was Hunter Valley, which is known as Australia's premier wine region. I checked into a hostel in Cessnock, where a lot of young "gap year" kids (19/20 year old) are working as grape pickers in the vineyards to finance their travels, experience "backpacker life" or learn some more English. I suddenly realised how happy I am to have saved enough money for all my travels so that I won't have to work anywhere along the way. I got to taste some of the wine from the local vineyards where they were picking, but I'll have to wait one or two years before I can actually drink the wine for which they picked grapes. Unluckily for them, the season was not very good, and the work was scarce, meaning that most of them were hardly making any money.
The next morning I took a drive among the vineyards and then headed off to Port
Stephens. Port Stephens is an area full of beautiful little bays and beaches along the East coast. During lunch time at one of the bays, I witnessed a rescue exercise with a helicopter and people to be
"rescued" in the water. Port Stephens is not far from Newcastle, an average city in Australia, but nicely situated on the East coast and with some interesting old buildings and a nice beach with good waves for surfing. I arrived there in the afternoon, had a stroll in the city for a few hours, and that was pretty much all I saw of Newcastle. By the way, Newcastle is also the birthplace of the members of one of Australia's most famous rockbands, Silverchair, and they still live there.
The next day was a drive to Coffs Harbour. I had a stopover in Port Macquarie, where I visited the Billabong Koala Wildlife Park, where some Koalas, Kangaroos, Emus and other animals live.
Koalas are very cute animals. They seem to be very lazy, because they sleep/rest about 18 hours a day!
I also had a stopover in Nambucca heads which had very impressive views of the East coast.
In Coffs harbour, I
stayed in a hostel where I met another Dutch guy and two Dutch girls. Always nice to speak a little Dutch again when you're traveling that long. Since they were also going to Byron Bay the next day, I offered them a ride there. They came along and we could hardly fit 4 backpacks and another 6 bags or so in the car, but in the end we managed and set off to Byron Bay. On the way we had a stop in Nimbin, a very small town that became well known for all the hippies that stayed here after a big "New Age" festival (Aquarius Festival) was held here in 1973. Some of them simply never left and a hippie community formed here. Reason enough for a quick visit.
Byron Bay, to me, was just another surf town along the coast. It has beautiful views of the coastline and an old Lighthouse up on a hill, but it was like many other coastal towns in Australia's East Coast: a lot of young backpackers on a drinking and partying mission only. I felt pretty old for not being into that kind of holiday anymore! Or maybe I am into
it, but not with 19-year olds... hmmm, well, I still had a nice drink with my Dutch friends there and left for Brisbane the next morning! I went to the lighthouse first and stood on the "most easterly point of the Australian mainland" and enjoyed some spectacular views of the cliffs. There was a couple of dolphins swimming there as well!
As I mentioned before, Brisbane is in the state Queensland, and I'll be telling you about it in a next post!
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Erik
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Nice pics
Nice Pics Tony Especially like the first one (the road with clouds) seems like an HDR image, no? Feels fantasy like. Keep up the good work in taking beautiful pics, and make sure you create a photoalbum when you are back in Holland; great legacy! :-) Take care mate!