Curiosities - Spring in Fall and Christmas

October has arrived - the woods have tossed
Their final leaves from naked branches;
A breath of autumn chill - the road begins to freeze,
The stream still murmurs as it passes by the mill.
The pond, however's frozen; ...
(Pushkin, From Autumn)

Am I wrong or is fall finally arriving for you guys, or at least for the ones amongst you living in the Northern Hemisphere? The wind is getting chillier, the days grow shorter and leave room for longer afternoons in front of the fireplace with a cup of tea, rain is pouring down heavily, kids are out in the fields playing with their kites; slowly, the colors of the forests and of the leafs of the trees change... and if I were in Canada now, we would get a canoe and spend a couple of wonderfully quiet days out on some forelorn lake with nothing but the blue sky and the sun above us and the burning colors of the forests during the Indian Summer around us and the wild geese slowly moving South. Soon, I would wake up every morning and run to the window, in the hope of seeing the first dancing snow flakes.

Well, at least, that's how I feel. That's how the world should be like!! You all know that I love autumn so very much and that I can't wait for the first snow to fall. However, my world here does not seem to fit with what I am feeling - there is just no autumn to be found even though David and I feel that it should be starting any minute now. No, here, spring is coming up and I can tell you, as much as I usually enjoy the first signs of green after the long months of lifeless nature and wish for the first colorful blossoms to show, here and now it just confuses me terribly. I took some pictures so you might be able to take a look at them and figure out if you feel like that right now! The worst is, with nature looking like that I would expect Easter to be coming up soon but no, wrong again. Here, the first Christmas decorations are up, when looking for postcards I stumble over Christmas cards, and in one shop I truely found the first Christmas Stollen!!! Help!!! Something is wrong here! I don't get it right!!! You want to know who we met on the street the other day??

Here goes the picture :





So, that's that. My world is all upside down and I am thoroughly confused!!! ;)

But I am sure that won't stop me from enjoying the last part of our Australian journey - the famous Sydney - and from writing to you again soon with some richer content! For now, I just wanted to share some curiosities of our travels with you!


PS: Dear Suse! Thank you so much for your long letter and also for the package of tea! I am sure it would have been wonderful! Unfortunately, your fears were quite justified, the whole package has been put into quarantine! The customs are offering me a heat treatment to kill any potential danger in the tea bags, only it would cost me $45. As it would also cost me $45 to have them send the tea back to you without any heat treament, I figure, you won't mind the tea being consumed by the customs officers, would you? :) ... I guess this will become part of our collection of tea stories now!

Fraser Island

Une île de sable, une grande dune qui s'est au fil des ans recouverte de végétation: Fraser c'est ça. C'est la plus grade étendue de sable du monde, et sous les différentes forêts et les différents lacs d'eau douce qui la recouvre maintenant se cache plus de sable que n'en contient le Sahara...

L'île est déjà magnifique en elle-même et vaut largement le déplacement, mais ce qui en fait une île particulièrement appréciée des touristes est qu'il est impossible d'y circuler autrement qu'en 4x4; pour faute de route. Et nous, bin nous n'avons pas pu résister :-). Donc on a loué un gros "4 wheel drive" (cf photo plus haut) et on est parti sur les pistes de sable le long de la mer (toujours turquoise, cf photo ci-contre), et sur les pistes déjà beaucoup plus difficile pour la conduite à l'intérieur de l'île.

Quand je dis "difficile pour la conduite", c'est un euphémisme... conduire un 4x4 sur du sable, c'est un peu comme conduire avec des pneus lisses sur de la neige... ça "chasse" :-p et ma petite Angi a mis quelques minutes à bien maîtriser le gros 4x4. moi à côté, j'ai mis quelques minutes à m'adapter aussi... et puis une fois le style de conduite à adopter acquis, ce fut le bonheur. On s'est fait plaisir à tour de rôle sur la plage, et on s'est moins fait plaisir à tour de rôle aussi sur les pistes fôrestières, parce que celles-là... c'est moins marrant : vitesse moyenne : 5km/h, ça secoue comme pas possible, on est chahutés de tous les côtés, et on en prend plein le dos. On a en plus peur de rester bloqués à la moindre racine ou à la moindre montée un peu raide et un peu sablonneuse, et on est souvent bien content du mode 4x4 de notre pick-up. Pour finir dans les réjouisssances, les pistes sont à 99% prévues pour un seul véhicule, et on a peur à chaque virage de se retrouver nez à nez avec un plus gros que nous :-p

Par contre, l'intérieur de l'île vaut largement la plage... la forêt tropicale et les différentes forêts d'eucalyptus sont magnifiques, et les lacs.... des petits coins de paradis cachés, à se demander comment ils ont bien pu atterrir là. leur eau est turquoise (à croire que c'est la couleur de l'eau standard sur les îles australiennes), ils sont bordés par endroits de plages de sable fin et d'un blanc à faire pâlir une mariée, et dans quelques recoins, par des mangroves et des côtes un peu plus sauvages. Devinez quoi, il y en a une qui n'a pas pu résister : Angi a fini à l'eau, comme à l'accoutumée (cf photo ci-contre)

On aura finalement passé 2 jours et 1 nuit sur Fraser Island, et on va en garder le souvenir encore longtemps. (ouais ouais je sais, vous vous dites : "il a déjà dit ça pour la grande barrière de corail et pour Ayers Rock et pour Kakadu etc...." bin j'y suis pour rien moi s'il y a tellement d'endroits superbes en Australie :-p )

The Islands - the second

Yep, this is our favorite pastime at the moment, exploring the islands along Australia's eastcoast is just so much fun. This time, however, we did not just end up on a beautiful sand beach, the whole island, Fraser Island, is just a large sand dune. Some people say, there's more sand than in the Sahara; well, we did not examine that in detail, but we sure saw a lot of sand and found it even days after we left in the most impossible places you can imagine. :)

The tricky thing about Fraser is that there are no roads on the island, the only way to get around is by hiring a 4-Wheel-Drive and have fun. So that's what we did and I can assure you, we did have a lot of fun and also got shaken through very thoroughly! The best part was driving on the beach, which just goes on for miles and miles and miles. You can drive up to 80km/h and keep going for hours so that gives you in impression of the size of that beach. It's just amazing, the white of the sand, the blue of the sky and the water (when it was not raining!!!) and the 4WD sliding off in all directions. At first, I was a little afraid because I did not have the slightest clue of how the car would react, but after a couple of slides, I managed quite well and it actually can be as much fun as driving and sliding on snow! David, of course, enjoyed himself immensely and we can say that we only got stuck in the sand once, and that was only for a little tiny moment, until David pushed the car a bit and we got out of it again. However, we had to help another German couple to really dig out their car, the poor guys were stuck sooo badly...

Besides the fun of driving a 4WD for two days, Fraser also had a very impressive ship wreck to show and some incredibly clear inland lakes. The sand of the island filters the water and that's how those lakes end up crystal clear. Although it was raining whenever we got out of the car to visit one of those lakes (that was a mean game: we get out - it starts raining, we get into the car - it stops raining...)I kept up my reputation and went swimming in one!!! (photo coming soon) Actually, that was the best idea ever because the water was warmer than the air, it was all soft and clear and I did not want to get out anymore. :)

Well, as you might have figured already, it's actually been a couple of days since we were on Fraser and we are right now spending our second week of WWOOFing, but we had some problems to find Internet access and so our posts are a little late. However, you'll soon get some more news on how I am looking after sheep, how well we chop off the heads of chicken.... and on what it is like in general for a city girl to live on a farm!

Les whitsunday's

South Mole Island, c'est :

• du sable blanc
• une mer turquoise
• des animaux (surtout des poissons) de toutes les couleurs
• un emplacement pour la tente sur la plage, tout juste protégé par quelques palmiers
• un pur moment de bonheur !

... et c'est là qu'on a passé 3 jours géniaux. Si si, je vous assure !

D'abord, le lieu : Les Whitsunday's sont un archipel de 74 îles sur la côte pacifique: South Mole Island est une des îles les plus grandes, et c'est là qu'on a planté la tente, à 30m de la mer, sur le bord d'une plage toute blanche, avec une vue d'enfer le matin au levé du soleil et le soir au coucher. (cf photo dans le post d'Angi).
Ensuite, le temps : on a vraiment eu beaucoup de chance avec le temps vu que comme d'habitude, on a eu du très beau temps (cf toutes les autres photos). Ca nous a permis de faire de la plongée avec tuba sur pratiquement toutes les plages de l'île, au dessus des massifs de corail ou dans les mangroves, de quoi voir entre autres un requin, 2 petites raies, une raie manta, une tortue et des centaines de petits (et moins petits) poissons. On a aussi eu la chance de profiter d'un paysage magnifique, avec une vue sur les 73 autres îles de l'archipel, de couchers de soleils magnifiques et d'un soleil à vous changer en écrevisse. Au final, on a passé 3 super bonnes journées à nager partout où c'était possible, à bronzer, à marcher, à regarder la mer (c'est notre passion) et pour finir, on a eu droit à un spectacle magnifique : deux baleines qui sont venues s'ébattres juste dans la baie où nous campions, à quelques mètres du bord. On est restés scotchés.

Seule fausse note dans ces quelques jours de vacances, on a faillit rester plus longtemps que prévu : le bateau qui nous avait déposé et qui devait venir nous chercher a pris 3 heures de retard, à tel point qu'on y croyait plus quand il est arrivé. C'est pas que ça nous aurait dérangé beaucoup de rester plus longtemps sur ce coin de paradis, mais on n'avait pas prévu de rab de nourriture pour pas trop nous charger, et on commençait à avoir peur de mourir de faim. Finalement tout s'est arrangé, pour le grand plaisir d'Angi, et on est bien rentré au port; même si c'était avec un poil de retard sur l'horaire prévu.

The Islands - the first

The whitsunday's...

The fine, white sand stretches as far as you can see to the right and to the left. It is so white that it almost dazzles the eye. Above, the palm trees move languidly in the light breeze that runs along the beach coming from the ozean. The crystal clear water shimmers light turquoise close to the beach and slowly turns into deeper blue when the eye sways to the horizon. It is possible to observe some fish whilst walking along the beach but the dark stretches of coral just three meters off the shore promise much more staggering views. Suddenly, the lound blowing of a whale shooting a water fountain into the air disrupts the absolute calm of the place. About 50m of the beach, the mother whale with her little one play around in the current for a couple of minutes before they decide to let themselves be drifted off into deeper waters. After a while they dive, turn up in front of the beach again and repeat their game. It seems to be their only occupation for the afternoon....

If I tell you now that this is where we put up our tent for four days - are you going to be mad at me? South Molle Island, one of the smaller Islands of the Whitsunday Group was our way of avoiding the regular touristy way of exploring the region: buying a 4-day tour on a yacht together with about 20 other people and being very poor afterwards. We found a nice little boat that took us over to the island and dropped us right on paradis beach with enough water to survive for four days. And there we were: laying in the sun, snorkling in the crystal clear waters, hiking all over the beach, star-gazing at night, ..., and all this basically all alone because there were only three other camper families there. It was truely paradise, especially when the whales turned up or when we went out snorkeling and saw the most beautifully colored and shaped fishes!

But of course, even South Molle Island is part of dangerous Australia and we encountered some more animal friends in our paradise. After two days of sorrowfree snorkling we woke up on the third morning, seeing our French neighbors running out of the water after only a couple of minutes. Why? They had seen Jellyfish (Quallen), which, as everything in this country, are life-threatening with their poison. You have about 20-30 minutes till your heart stops when you get toughed by them. So we thought we'd just hike to the other side of the island and go snorkling there. The advantage was that while hiking we had more than enough time to revise all first aid procedures which resulted in me being really relaxed when arriving at the deserted beach and getting into the water without any worries at all!

While getting prepared, I saw a small grey fin cutting the surface of the water... doubts....no, that was just impossible. There couldn't be any sharks in the water that close to the beach. So I told David there was a fun fish in the water pretending to be a shark and he just laughed and went into the water. About 3 seconds and one underwater look to the left later, he came running back telling me there was a shark in the water!!! How comforting! So now I was to go snorkling with a shark and jellyfish in the water and still remain relaxed. All right, let's do it the Australian way: easy mate, no worries! There we go... but just for about 5 minutes before we saw the first jellyfish ourselves and rushed back to the coast.

But of course, events like that cannot discourage us anymore, now that we are Australian wildlife prooven, so we decided to do some rockclimbing and get to some other beaches well of the beaten tracks to do snorkling there. Having a lot of fun scambling around the rocks, we thus reached the most beautiful sandbeach you can imagine and in the shallow waters we were able to watch some rays (Rochen) for quite a while before they got scared! Of course we tried to go snorkling again but were also frightened out of the water by more jellyfish.

When the sun dropped low, we figured it would be best to start our way back and off we went, on the rocks again. This time, however, we had not climbed for more than three minutes when I saw a long grey snake run between David's feet! Hmpf! As we did not have a choice, we moved on along the rocks, only to meet another nice spicimen of the same kind 5 minutes later... In the end, we saw three greyish brown snakes and one black and yellow, which was just 10 cm from where David put his hand while climbing up a rock. Of course we later found out that this one was a snake with deadly poison but with our luck we should have know that the minute we saw it!

To round the day up, when we got back to the campground, our French friends told us that they had run into a saltwater crocodile only about 500m away from the camp. So: jellyfish, shark, snakes, croco... for me that was enough to get a little worried about our security on our paradise island! But fortunately, the next day was supposed to be our departure day from the island. Or at least so we thought.

The idea was that the boat was to come in on high tide around 1pm and pick us up. Well, 1pm, no one there. 2pm, no one there but... no worries mate! 2.30pm, decending water, no one there, Angi starting to get worried. I finally called the guy from the boat service but no one answered the phone. 3pm, still no one there and water decending faster. We start to calculate how long we can survive on 2 carrots and 10 liters of water... 4pm, still no one there and first plans are developed on how to get to the Resort hotel on the other side on the island... Finally, at 4.30pm the boat shows up and we, after having to wade out there with our equipment as there was not enough depth left, were able to leave our beautiful island and get back to the mainland.

We figured that having been stranded on an island of the Whitsunday group was not the worst that can happen to you but the next time, we'll still bring some extra ratios of food!

Et le travail alors ??

Le travail c'est pas pour nous ! :-p

Et pourtant, c'est pas faute d'avoir essayé !
L'histoire se passe à Bowen : petite ville assez sympa de la côte Est de l'Australie, avec de très belles plages. On avait prévu de rester là 2 semaines, vu qu'Angi nous avait dégotté un job de ramasseurs de tomates dans une ferme à proximité. Oui mais voilà.... ça c'est la théorie, et la pratique s'est révélée un poil diffgérente :

Levés à 5:30 un Samedi matin pour aller ramasser des tomates, déjà, ça partait fort, ensuite, le boulot en lui même, c'est un truc de fou : assis sur des espèces de grands tracteurs, à raz du sol, pour ramasser des tomates au fur et à mesure que le "tracteur" avance, et les déposer sur un tapis roulant pour qu'elles soient triées et stockées sur le haut de la machine, le tout à une cadence infernale... c'est tout sauf amusant. En plus, ça tue le dos, les mains, les hanches, et ça donne mal au coeur. On a passé 9 heures en plein soleil à faire ça, on a finis malades comme des chiens (Angi a attrapé froid sur le haut de la machine, en plein vent, et moi j'ai pris une bonne insolation qui m'a fait vider mes tripes en plein champs...) dur dur la vie de backpacker/travailleur. Au moins nous disons nous, on se fait un max d'argent, et ça vaut la peine de se faire violence. Oui mais voilà... toutes les infos qu'on récolte durant la journée en discutant avec les gens plus expérimentés nous mènent à la même conclusion : C'est une arnaque complète. On a calculé qu'après impôts (pas loin de 30% quand même...), on gagne en gros 35 euros pour 9 heures de travail, ce qui fait un ratio brut de moins de 4 euros de l'heure..... vous voyez où je veux en venir : on a vite conclu que travailler c'est pas ce qu'il y a de plus rentable, surtout si on compte qu'il faut encore déduire le prix d'une semaine de camping de la somme gagnée. Du coup on a éteint le réveil, et le lendemain on est allés se baigner tranquilou sur la plage :-)

vive le travail !!

Ce que je viens de vous décrire là, c'est un peu l'esprit australien de base, que nous avons décidé d'adopter avec Angi, et auquel j'ai donné un nom : l'izigouinitude
(easy-going-itude). Décrit en quelques mots, ça serait : "la vie est trop courte pour se prendre la tête" ;-)

And we keep on working!!! ;)

Hello to everybody around the world, this time from Rainbow Beach (about 200 km North of Brisbane)!

You are wondering what we are doing down here while we should be 1000 km further North in Bowen working day after day after day? Hm, you are quite right in asking that question! Well, we are pursueing our tactic of earning money by spending it!

No, seriously, you might not believe me, but we actually set out to find some work after I wrote to you last time. Thanks to the good preparation (Danke fuer das Weihnachtsgeschenk, Mama) it took us one phonecall and we had a job as tomato pickers for the next day! Easy, so we thought. The truth was quite different but in order to understand, you'll have to keep in mind that we are experienced travellers now, not used to any kind of prearangements, fixed planning, excessive physical activity, stress, ... we are just easy-going! ;)

So, the first shock we had to survive was the alarm clock that went off at 5.30 in the morning! Can you imagine that?!? No, probably not, but we were not used to that kind of offence anymore and it felt quite wrong to get up while it was still dark and cold outside and while we were still tired! The second shock was that we couldn't spent 2 hours over our breakfast, we couldn't even get some tea going (which means that actually the day was already lost!). 6.30 am found us half awake and still freezing cold on the farm and at 7 am we were placed on the machine and off we went. There was a kind of assembly-line between the two of us where we had to place the tomatos that we ripped of the plants and it was not easy at all to keep up with the rhythm of the machine that moved forwards continuously. Moreover, all the red tomatos where at the bottom of the plants which meant that we couldn't feel our backs anymore after 5 minutes and we regularly ate some leaves and stuff and scratched off the skin of our arms while trying to reach the vegies.

However, there were good sides to our work as well. The sun was shining down on us hour after hour burning our skin and cooking what was left in our brains after hours of monotonous work, all body parts exposed to the plants were turning a charming green-brownish and the pauses were over after only seconds (it seemed). In the end, I found myself up on top of the machine sorting all the tomatos all the pickers sent up to me and there the wind almost blew me off and I went back from being grilled to being frozen again. By the end of the day, after 10 hours of work, I could feel a really nice cystitis (Blasenentzuendung) starting and David was vomitting due to lack of strength.

The good news was that we had picked about 450 kg of tomatos each and had earned about $50 after taxes! Deducting the cost of food and camping, we ended up with about $30 each! That was well worthwhile the trouble, wasn't it? Yep, that's what we figured as well. So after considering our budget and all the money we had earned before leaving and our other options of reducing travel costs (WWOOFing, which we will explain later on), we just turned off the alarm clock and went to bed happily!

The next day found us back in our natural rhythm getting up when it was light and warm, having a good breakfast with lots of tea, and a nice long stroll along the beach. We then realized that we had not had one single day without doing anything during our travells so far, all the time we had been visiting, moving on somewhere, organizing something... so we took it easy and just did nothing! What a wonderful experience! Well, to be a little more serious, I had to take good care of my cystitis and as we had had to pay the campground for a week in advance we had a lot of time to think about how to continue our travels and how to deal with our budget. But nobody says that you can't do that lying on the beach and enjoying the sun, the breeze and the crystal clear waters... :)

So, the final decision was to keep on spending money and visit some of the most notorious islands on the coast, the Whitsunday Islands and Fraser Island, and then spend some time WWOOFing in the interior of the country. For all of you who have not heard about WWOOFing, it means Willing Workers On Organic Farms and is a worldwide network. Once you have become a member, you get all the contact details for farms in a country and you can contact them to arrange stays. The deal is: free food and accomodation for 4 hours of work every day. We figured that that was exactly what our budget needed - a time when we don't spend any money - and what our spoilt bodies needed - the luxury of a bed and good food (not just noodles with tomato sauce.... and yes, we still eat tomatos;)).

So, soon you'll find some more Island stories here and we'll also figure out if I manage to look after sheep!

Cheers!

Für Olli!

Hallöchen lieber Olli!

Dies ist dieses Mal eine Nachricht ganz fuer dich alleine - zu deinem Geburtstag! Wir wuenschen dir naemlich alles alles Gute vom anderen Ende der Welt!

Wie ich euch kenne, feiert ihr bestimmt ganz gross und du laesst es dir gut gehen und dich verwoehnen. Richtig so! Dem Michi habe ich auch gesagt, er soll dich von mir knuddeln, also wenn er das nicht macht, dann kannst du ihn bestrafen!

Ich hoffe, dass du viel Spass mit unserem Blog hast und auch ein bisschen etwas verstehen kannst, leider habe ich nie viel Zeit, um auch auf Deutsch zu schreiben. Aber du lernst ja schon Englisch. Da klappt das bestimmt!

Also, wir wuenschen dir einen ganz, ganz tollen Geburtstag, viele tolle Geschenke und dann hoffentlich einen guten Start an der neuen Schule!

Ganz dicker Geburtstagsknuddler!
Angi & David

Le meilleur moyen de gagner de l'argent ...

... c'est d'en dépenser autant qu'on peut

Bon ok, c'est expérimental comme technique et pour l'instant on est pas trop sûrs que ça va bien marcher ... :-p. Disons que c'est venu tout seul. En revenant de Cape Trib (cf. l'histoire avec l'oiseau), nous nous sommes posés un peu à Cairns (photo) pour une journée, en prévoyant de redescendre un peu au sud pour chercher du boulot. Oui mais voilà, les deux activités principales dans la région sont : la culture des cannes à sucre (n'embauchent pas de saisonniers, il faut des gens qualifiés) et les bananes... qui ont toutes été arrachées par un cyclône au mois de mars dernier. Du coup, y a rien pour nous, alors plutôt que de bacler notre descente de la côte ouest juste pour trouver du boulot, on a remis ça à plus tard, et on a décidé de profiter de la proximité de la grande barrière de corail pour s'offrir un tour dessus. Pour résumer en un mot : "Grandiose" !! on s'est offert un tour d'une journée à bord d'un acient navire perlier qui en a vu de toutes les couleurs avant de devenir un bateau de plongée sur la grande barrière de corail (coulé deux fois et brûlé une fois...). Magnifique. On a eu de la chance avec le temps : super grand soleil, du coup on avait un très bon éclairage, et le bateau étant très petit comparé aux gros catamarans des grosses compagnies, on était pas trop nombreux dessus, donc l'ambiance était conviviale. Angi et moi nous sommes mis à l'eau deux fois au cours de la journée, pour effectuer deux plongées bouteille sur deux endroits différents de la barrière. C'était que du bonheur ! Je ne peux malheuresement pas vous en faire profiter avec des photos, mon apn n'étant pas étanche, mais c'était vraiment beau. Au menu : des poissons de toutes les couleurs par centaines, un requin (si si, je vous jure, un vrai, mais pour le coup il m'a fait moins peur que l'oiseau :-p ), une raie manta, et des poissons clowns (comme Nemo). c'était vraiment superbe. On a fini la journée creuvés mais heureux !

On s'est ensuite vraiment mis a chercher du boulot en descendant, mais on n'a pas trouvé tout de suite. On a entre autre cherché dans une ville qui s'appelle Tully, ville ouvrière morte avec pour seule attraction un moulin à cannes à sucre. En passant, faute d'avoir trouvé du boulot, on s'est quand même arrêtés au moulin, histoire d'essayer de le voir de près, et là on a fait la connaissance de Peter, un australien hyper sympa qui travaille dans le moulin et qui nous a proposé de nous le faire visiter. On a bien sûr accepté, mais quelle a été notre surprise de le voir nous faire signe embarquer sur un train :-s (cf photo un peu plus haut dans le post d'Angi). Explication : Les cannes à sucre doivent être moulues moins de 16h après avoir été coupées. Il ne faut donc pas perdre de temps, et les australiens ayant voulu pousser l'efficacité au maximum ont construit dans toutes les régions à cannes à sucre des réseaux de voies ferrées super denses pour pouvoir collecter les cannes directement par train pour les amener au moulin, et notre nouvel ami Peter s'est proposer de nous faire la totale, incluant le tour en train... QUE DU BONHEUR !!! :-). Peter nous même laissé conduire le train :-D (photo), on a passé 4h à bord, et on a adoré. non content de ça, peter nous a aussi fait visiter le moulin entièrement pendant sa pause (y compris les zones normalement interdites au public), et nous a offert l'hospitalité pour la soirée, j'adore les australiens !!! :-)

Ensuite on est repartis direction le sud. On s'est arrêtés dans un camping sympa à côté d'un trou d'eau super beau où, une fois n'est pas coutume, je me suis baigné :-) pour ne pas laisser Angi seule profiter de ce petit coin de paradis (2 photos). A force de descendre vers le sud, on est arrivés à Townsville, ville plutôt pas trop touristique, mais qui essaye de le devenir et qui pour l'instant fait ça pas trop mal. On a surtout profité d'être dans le coin pour aller se faire un tour sur Magnetic Island (pas de photos ici parce que bon... y avait pas grand chose à photographier :-( ). L'île était jolie mais sans plus, et surtout elle était très morte :-s. Une petite annecdote sympa juste pour vous faire rire un peu concernant notre passage sur cette île : On ne voulais pas payer le camping, donc après s'être renseignés au près des locaux, on s'est installés sur un petit coin d'herbe assez sympa juste au bord de la plage et à l'abris des curieux... oui mais voilà, sur le coup de 2h du mat', v'là-t-y pas qu'on se fait réveiller par l'arrosage automatique en plein sur notre tente -_- super... Bref, On a fini par revenir sur le continent, un peu déçus par cette île pas aussi géniale que ce qu'on nous avait décrit.

Et le travail dans tout ça nous direz-vous ? ouais bin ... on y pense hein... on y pense :-p et un jour c'est sûr on va s'y mettre, le temps de descendre encore un peu au sud et d'arriver vers Bowen, et c'est sûr on va travailler.........

The best way to earn money...

... is to spend as much as you can! ;)

Well, we are not quite sure if it works out that way but it definitely is our prefered way of life at the moment! As we told you the last time on this blog, we were about to abandon our traveller's life for a while and become hard working "Australian" farm hands. The only problem with this idea was a cylone. Not one that threatened us at present, but rather the one in March this year. It destroyed basically all the banana plantations in Australia's North-East and did not only leave the farmers without income but us without work. So after some desperate attempts at finding work, we VERY reluctantly ;) gave up the pursuit and decided to spend some money instead.

So what did the two desperate travellers do? Without much hesitation we booked a tour to go diving on the Great Barrier Reef, a very cheap thing to do! :) So, two days later we were setting foot on the "Falla" (photo), an old sailing ship that has done about everything possible a ship could do to have an interesting history. She started out as a pearl ship, became a fishing boat, re-sailed James Cook's (discoverer of Australia) journey around the East Coast until she was accidentally set on fire by a fire-cracker for the 200th birthday of Australia, she became a tourist boat until she was sunk by some silly captain and some even sillier tourist clothing that plugged up the emergency pumps, and finally, she was all redone by the present captain and is now sailing out to the Great Barrier Reef every day - on board about 20 tourists, the funky captain, the dive teacher Ken, and the ocean-adicted German girl Rosy.

We had chosen this boat instead of a shiny catamaran with about 80-300 tourist on it for the obvious reason of having a quieter journey and the true feeling of sailing out there. Well, the true feeling of getting out there we did get. With the wind blowing at about 20 knots, David unfortunately had some trouble to keep his stomach quite, although I had been the one worrying about that all the time before... I had to enjoy the lunch, fruits, cheese, etc. almost all on my own but at least he was better on the way back and could still enjoy the ride and the dives.

Yeah, the dives. What should I tell you to make you the least jealous? When we got to the Great Barrier Reef, the sky was shining blue, the sun was grilling us, the cay (small sandy island) stood out shining white from the water, and I was so afraid to do something wrong during the first dive of my life... but once down in the water, everything else was forgotten. The experience was just too impressive, too out of this world, it was simply fantastic. The corals were presenting themselves in all different colors, the fishes were not only the most shining you can imagine but there were soooooo many of them, they were so huge, ... it was breathtakingly beautiful. During our first dive we even saw a rock shark which awoke some awkward feelings about big dangerous animals in Australia in us, but fortunately, the shark did not care half us much about us than we did about him. During our second dive - yeah, we even did a second one because it was just too good - we saw those small clownfish which you probably all know from the movie Nemo. And I can tell you, they are some fun creatures! I would not have thought so but they were my absolute favorites! In and out, in and out, in and out, ... they really do that!

Hmmmm, this was defenitely one of the highlights of our travels, that's for sure. As we had not spent enough money yet, we decided to travel some further and down South we went and took a look at the Atherton Tablelands. We stopped over in the extremely ugly city of Tully to ask at the local sugar cane mill if they did not need some workers but luckily they also got struck by the cyclone and we got away without having to work. However, we had another wonderful experience which David claims is due to my smile... after having talked to one of the workers for a while he invited us to take a ride with him on the sugar cane train (photo). As an explanation: the whole country up here is full of small train rails linking the thousands of sugar cane farmers with the mill. Trains are used to deliver metal wagons to the farmers who fill them up with the harvest and afterwards those wagons are taken to the mill by the trains again. Sometimes a train can have up to 250 wagons! And we did not only get to ride on one of those trains and got the explation of it in detail, the guy even let us drive the train!!! Well, of course we have pics to prove it :-) but it was just the most fun you can imagine. David couldn't stop smiling for days afterwards. ;) Soon, there won't be a lot of vehicles left that he has not driven, flown, sailed...

Of course, Peter, the Australian, also gave us a tour of the mill and we could follow the production of sugar in detail and even taste the raw sugar cane and the final brown sugar. Impressive! To finish up, Peter invited us to stay at his place and of course we accepted and enjoyed the comforts of a bed! Imagine, a bed! Well, for you it might be nothing special but for us.... just to keep you informed, right now, we have not seen a shower for five days, so you may imagine what a hot shower or a bed may mean to us! THANK YOU PETER! Australians are just wonderful people!

Well, to finish up our money spending story we drove down to Townsville (where we are right now) and as we couldn't get to Hinchinbrook Island and do a four day hike because you have to reserve at least 6 months ahead of time and we only knew about one hour before that we were getting there (what an impossible thing to demand of a backpacker!!!!), we decided to take the ferry and go over to Magnetic Island. There we spent the last three days but were rather disappointed by the touristy appearance and the not so very spectacular landscape. We wanted to do our first overnight hike there but just after the first 8 km, we met some Rangers who told us that we wouldn't be able to camp out there anywhere. :( So we had to give up our plans of romantically sleeping on the beach and had to hike back. Fortunately, a nice couple finally gave us a lift back, so we didn't have to do all of the unspectacular way twice. Moreover, we made a new friend: the cutest Koala you can imagine :-) (photo)

Ah, I have to tell you another fun story before finishing up. We are on Magnetic Island and of course, the small village that we have chosen does not have a campsite. So we decide to put up our tent in a foreloren area of the beach (camping is forbidden everywhere). We choose a nice grassy area and happy after a long and busy day go to bed and sleep well. At around 2.30 in the morning we suddenly are woken up by the puffing and sizzling noise outside our tent. While still wondering if we are dreaming or not, our tent suddenly gets attact by hard jets of water. Rain? Finally, getting all our senses together, we figure out that this must be an automatic sprinkling system! So there we are, in the middle of the green grass area getting rained on from all sides and that for about 1 1/2 hours! Of course it was impossible to sleep and our only comfort was that we were so lucky as not to have set up our tent on one of those sprinklers!!! That would have been something!!!

So, now we are definitely running low on budget and the need for a job is getting so strong that we might actually start to seriously look for one. Once we drive further South tomorrow we should also be getting into the agricultural heartland of Queensland and a region that was not hit by the cyclon. So, no more excuses - now the jobhunt has begun! Wish us good luck!

Cheers till the next time!