On the east coast

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So, I have made it across Australia - still a concept that for me as a European is hard to grasp... you sit in an aeroplane for 4,5 hrs, fly across a continent and still you are in the same country. Hard to imagine.

I stayed last night at Barnaby & Anna's place, got picked up by the taxi and arrived in time at the Perth Domestic Airport. Funnily this terminal is much, much busier than the international airport - if that doesn't tell you something ;-) The flight was pretty smooth and sitting at the window I had the opportunity to get some aerial views of Australia - my dear friends, I can tell you, this country is dry. Apart from the ocean I haven't seen a single major body of water. No running rivers, no lakes, no surface water at all. What you can see are the dry creeks running through the bush (marked by the higher density of vegetation) and gigantic dry lake beds, which have a sandy yellow color in contrast to the typical orange-brown of the Aussie bush. I guess that during the rainy season (or to be correct "winter") these creeks and lakes fill up rather quickly. However the last real rainfall in WA is quite some time ago...


OK, so now I am sitting here in Brisbane in an Internet Cafe, had some Japanese dinner, and got a room in a backpacker's place right in the middle of the Brisbane CBD. Tomorrow morning I am getting on the bus that will take me further north. Can't wait to leave the city behind (I got nothing particular against Brisbane - it's just more a general feeling, that cities are pretty much the same across the "western civilized" world... out in the country the differences are much more striking).

Will post again, as soon as I got Internet access again - hopefully with the first pictures from the East Coast!

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