Australia

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The only thing suitable we could think of was to get to the Harbour bridge and Opera house as soon as we entered Sydney. Just to have some proof we made it here and to see the famous images in real life. So that's how we spent our first couple of hours in Australia...sitting in front of the Opera house with a view of the harbour, watching the commuters jumping on the ferries home and following the last people of the day braving it on the top of the harbor bridge whilst an aboriginal man was playing his didgeridoo(with techno beats) behind us.
We came to the conclusion we liked it and we were ready for our month in this immense country.
Sydney has enough to keep you occupied for a while and we struggled to fit it all in during our 5 day stay.
But after many ferries, museums -we joined a very informative guided tour on indigenous art-, beaches and restaurants we were ready to hit the road again and we decided to hire another camper van to do this.
Due to the higher rates and less availability we eventually ended up with our tiny Hippie camper (with the rest of the 18 year old party backpackers:-) and started our drive via the east coast up to Cairns.

Australia overall ended up being a very nice surprise. The camper van was actually perfect for the nice weather as it forced us a bit more outside and gave us the feeling we were on a proper camping trip, Although a touristy route there were plenty of opportunities to get away from this, and the surroundings we therefore ended up in, and especially the wildlife was just amazing.
I do have to agree with Bill Bryson that you do get a bit jumpy at times after seeing again a sign of possible death! .......Don't go into the high grass or walk over the bed of leaves as it can hide a deadly snake...if you're lucky to avoid them watch out for the spiders, don't even think about going to close to a creek as this is mr. Crocodile's residence, and the sea is completely off limits as this hides a deadly combination of crocs, sharks and the famous almost invisible stinging jelly fish (On every beach you can find a bottle of vinegar, which for first aid you can put on the wound...not much help if your breathing stops, but at least it gives you the idea you can do something) It took us a while before we figured out that on some beaches the red flag doesn't have anything to do with currents, but with croc sightings (I kept wondering who the first person was who sighted the croc and horrible images of someone with his limbs missing, dragging himself on the beach and putting up the red flag with his last strenght, kept haunting me) But of course they have a solution, the parts of the sea that are netted of. So - even after reading that the tiny jellyfish can probably happily swim through these nets and cause an excruciating death - we thought at least the sharks and crocs are out of the way and braved a full 5 minutes swimming within this comfortzone, before we really started to feel some stings and decided we proved our point enough.

Luckily we encountered nothing of real life or death importance and during our beautiful walks through the rainforest the only annoyance we encountered were leeches and ticks. One funny episode evolved when after walking into a hospital for some quick advise on a tick removal I ended up on an A&E bed with 5 nurses around me. Eventually even the doctor got called in from his home when the nurses only managed to remove half of the animal attached to me. (ok, admitt that the fact that another person brought in after a car accident also had something to do with the doctors arrival, but still a pleasant difference to the NHS) Anyway my point is; BE CAREFULL WHEN YOU'RE OUT IN THE WILD! :-)

Ok let's get back to the storyline (Sorry I had to get it of my chest). After departing Sydney we started with our tour by visiting the blue mountains, named after the blue colour the trees give off. It's a great place to visit with a campervan as there are several places you can just camp for free for the night and waking up in the morning on your own surrounded by forest is just a great feeling. After this little side trip inland we drove back to the coast and from there we made our way up. We spent one of our first days tasting wine in the Hunters Valley.. A great day where we ended up tasting wines in one place for over 3 hours whilst chatting to two Ozzies who worked there and apparently had a slow day. We learnt everything you need to know about Australian life - you have to wear thongs with two plugs, otherwise they are not real - and about life on a naval ship - when I worked on a ship we had a great night out on shore when a girls bikini top fell off and we all took pictures - . Anyway everything gets more interesting after 6 glasses of wine. Probably due to alcohol consumption we bought some expensive wine at some other shops and even more expensive (but very good!) creamy feta, brie and chedder in the smelly cheese shop. That was diner for the night sorted
Although we were warned about the touristy route we were taking , it ended up to be a great drive. The coastline has enough to offer and everytime we just wanted to get away from it completely, we only had to drive inland for an hour to find a quite spot, great rainforest or some nice little villages.
And after spotting first some flattened kangaroos and koala's at the side of the road and then some sick ones at the koala hospital we finally started to see some furry bums and hopping friends in the wild. It is an amazing feeling seeing those cute little fella's clinging on to a swinging tree in the wind and the first kangaroo gave us a massive scare standing on his backlegs with his chest forward right next to our campervan.

We ended our drive in beautiful Cape Tribulation about an hour north of Cairns. What an amazing place to end our visit and when we took a trip in the area we finally had our dreaded encounter with the salt water croc....Luckily from the safety of a boat!

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