Christian's posts with tag: australia
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|  | Yet more of the same theme... I know the subjects are rather repetitive, and yet this is such a great view! These ones were taken last Sunday when Jamie invited me and a few of his Argentinean friends to a little trip in his boat. We had a fabulous day out cruising the whole harbour bay! Jamie even spiced things up by letting us run out of fuel on the way back just a hundred meters before the mooring... Very exciting.
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I am still amazed. Or yet again. Everybody is so incredibly sociable hereabouts! You meet someone you have never met before through a friend in a bar and get invited to their dinner party the next night. People are delighted if you turn up surprisingly at their barbecue or birthday party without knowing anybody just because someone else decided to take you along. People I barely got to know offer me their spare bedroom for a week or two, should I need a place to stay... Just like that. All very natural. Has all happened several times to me.
I just came home from a party of a friend of a friend where repeatedly some drunk strangers from the party in the apartment above (an underwear-party) would walk in (in full clothes, though). The immediate reaction of the hosts: "Hello, how are you? What's your name. Good to meet you. Would you like a beer?" And then they would of course introduce Mike or Tim or Whatshisname to everybody at the party.
Also someone at the party strongly suggested I should consider a career change - nannies would be in high demand and she reckoned I could easily get sponsorship (that's someone being willing to sign up for you and take all responsibility for all your deeds towards the Australian government) and residency and a job in Sydney. As long as I was not a pedophile all should be easy. She reckoned also my qualifications and previous work experience as a physicist and engineer would be totally sufficient. Now you've got me thinking... (As it turned out she runs a nanny agency.)
Due to this "Sydney effect" I am having a very busy weekend right now. I will unfortunately even have to skip a brunch invitation tomorrow, that's just too much - since I am also invited to a dinner party of a girl who works as a designer and photographer, which I just got to know last night. So I will not even really know anyone there, but that's just the fun of it! And that way I also get to see a few different neighbourhoods of Sydney where I certainly would never go as a tourist.
Thanks to a few people here, my initial contacts - my friends Kat and Justin with whom I am staying, Anna whom I had met somewhere in Patagonia, and Jamie whom I met in Buenos Aires in the language school - I got to know so incredibly many nice, funny, and interesting people. So within a mere four weeks in total in this city I feel I already have a big social network of fabulous folks. And all that being just the transient traveller I am...
 Darwin is a strange place. I can tell. I have been here for a week. It is fully tropical, it is hot, it is humid. Palm trees and flowers everywhere, mango trees line the streets and parks, flocks of screaming cockatoos, noisy parrots... Nice beaches, but nobody would consider a dip in the crystal clear sea, aggressive salt-water crocodiles and deadly box-jellyfish are far too common. So if you do have to leave the air-conditioned interior of buildings during the day, you try to spend as much time as possible in the pool.
Life starts around sunset. Not only is this the time when the locals leave work, but it is also the moment when the travelling crowd has sufficiently sobered up from last-nights excessive drinking and partying and has digested the 3pm breakfast. Time for a drink. Or two. If you do not move too quickly then the humid 30+ degrees can be almost pleasant (at night, that is, during the day it is alwyas above 35!). The average traveller hereabouts is 19 years old. Only very few above 23, only the exceptional weirdo above 30 (that's me, hence). Priorities in life seem to include not much more than binge-drinking and partying. And everybody is oh-so-poor. That means buying the cheapest possible food from the supermarket in order to save a dollar or two, and then, not much later, to go out and spend insane amounts of money on booze and drugs... A 50$-night out is considered a very cheap one, indeed. Due to the relatively big time-lag between Australia and Europe or America you can often hear a traveller whinging on the phone in the middle of the night "Mum, can you send more money? Everything is soooo expensive hereabouts!"
Darwin is a transient place. I can tell. Most people only spend a night or two in one of the huge hostels on the main strip. Who is here for longer has a reason. A lift to somewhere else that is not going to happen before Tuesday next week, waiting for some days before the tour to Kakadu or Lichfield national park will start, stranded because the passport had expired and the new one has to arrive by mail in everything in between a week and a month, or general lack of organization. What there is to see in Darwin, you have seen pretty quickly - the museum which actually has an excellent exhibition on Aboriginal art, the parliament building (since Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory), the shopping mall. Not much more to mention. Well, except for the nightlife which is quite tremendous! No surprise with so little to do during the day and the oppressive heat.
Time to leave. Everybody is very glad to leave this little boom-town with so many concrete apartment flats - very recently finished ones and the ones still in construction. And I am leaving, too. Hurray! One last day and shortly after midnight I am off again to Sydney.
One last remark - go and see Brasileirinho. If you enjoyed Buena Vista Social Club you will totally love Brasileirinho (by Mika Kaurismaeki)! Saw it last night in the open-air deckchair cinema with a thin-slice moon and fruit-bats overhead. Fantastic! I must go back to South America... The film is about choro, a traditional Brazilian form of music, sometimes dubbed Brazilian Jazz. Besides the music which is fabulous, the photography is just wonderful. I can only say it again - go and see it!
 When I got out of the plane last Saturday it was like a hair-dryer constantly blowing into my face... Day temperatures between 33 and 39 degrees, at night maybe just below 30. Every hostel has a pool and you do need it. It is the only place to hang out during the day.
Alice itself is a rather spread-out and boring outback town, practically deserted during most of the day when the heat is just too much. And it is supposedly much worse during summer when temperatures regularly hover above 40 degrees. I am very grateful I do not have to endure that! It is usually a dry heat though, makes it much more bearable. Wet cloths on a cloths line dry in about 45 minutes... The only real nuisance, though, are the ubiquitous flies.
I had decided to ignore my aversion of guided tours and go on a three-day camping trip to see Uluru and the other things around here in the outback. And I was very glad I did so! I really enjoyed myself. Our guide, Chris, turned out to be a real aussie bloke who told us first thing that we had to live up to his reputation to always have the noisiest, smelliest, dirtiest and most obnoxious groups. In order to make sure we would not underestimate the amount of beer we would need during the three days, he gave us a little example of aussie maths on the windscreen (which he never wiped after this and other drawing exercises), see here. So according to his experience on average everyone of us would consume 31 beers (he actually reckoned 61, since we did have a few German and Irish people on the bus)... And he was not too far off, since the beers did go down very well with the heat.
Chris was actually not just very good at beer-maths, but as it turned out soon also very knowledgeable about everything regarding the land, flora, fauna and Aboriginal culture. No question he did not answer without a wealth of information and personal stories. Besides that, he is also just a terrific personality. I am very glad I got to meet him through this trip. But this actually holds also for the rest of the group (the "family"), which was a funny mix of people between 19 and sixty-something. We got along very well and camping out in swags (the aussie equivalent of a bivy-bag, made of heavy cotton and with a comfy mattress) under the stars and sitting around the camp fire together late at night was truly great. Thanks to everyone for making this trip such a pleasure!
On the first day we visited Kings Canyon, an impressive gorge cut into the reddish rocks with some beautiful pockets of vegetation. We came into our camp after dark. Next day we drove on and enjoyed an impressive walk through Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the morning, a visit to the cultural center and some walking near Uluru (Ayers Rock). I decided to climb the thing, as the decision is left to every individual - despite some of the indigenous people prefer you not to climb the rock, it is not completely out of bounds as several other areas where you simply are not allowed to go at all. And I am very glad I did go up. The views were truly amazing. The climb used to be an important step for the male initiation process. Boys around the age of 12 were lead up the rock. And I believe being able to see the whole landscape around in a birds-eye view must have been totally exhilarating to these people who knew all the features of the landscape below so well through their nomadic way of living.
After that we had to rush off to the sunset spot where already hundreds of tourists were occupying every possible centimeter to take the obvious picture... But the view still was impressive. Camping again, very early start next morning at 4.45 am to be up for the sunrise. Quite beautiful. More walking at the base of the rock and then an other long day driving back to Alice through the desert. Arrival at about 5 pm.
If all goes well, I will be heading up north to Darwin in the next days. I got a lift with a French guy wit a camper-van. More soon.
| | Just one remark on climbing Uluru. When I left for the tour I was leaning towards not climbing the rock as the Anangu people, the traditional inhabitants of the area, prefer you not to. When we arrived at the base, however, I changed my mind and went up. My basic reasoning in finally going went along the line that they merely ask you not to climb it but do not declare it out of limits (as they do with several other areas in the region, e.g. parts of Kata Tjuta and certain spots at the base of Uluru). They leave the decision on climbing explicitly up to you. I therefore concluded that the spiritual relevance can't be of that much of importance to them and decided to go. I did enjoy the views to be had and it was a special experience for me.
The two main reasons for the Anangu not wanting visitors to climb, as far as I understand, are that the trail has great spiritual significance to them and that they feel responsible for visitors on their land. The fact that several people each year die from heart-attacks and other accidents on the rock causes them much grieve. As for the latter, I was certain I would not contribute to the problem. The former issue, however, was obviously much more significant. The land (and the national park) are under administration of representatives of the local communities, as at least they have the majority of seats in the administrative board. I hence concluded they could easily forbid tourist to walk up the trail.
The thing I did not know back then and have only learned now, a couple of weeks later, following up on this issue, is that upon putting the responsibility and ownership back into the hands of the local communities in 1985, they had to agree to keep the climb open for tourists. It is hence not up to them to regulate the climb! This does make me see the issue in a different light now and I would therefore not climb it again, was I in the same situation. For that reason I have also removed my pictures from the climb from this album.
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  I had set off for three relaxing days on gorgeous North Stradbroke Island - tropical white-sand beaches, crystal clear sea, very few people... about five on a three-kilometer beach. I spent most of my time reading books. The supposedly spectacular marine wildlife (turtles, mantas, sharks etc.) will have to remain for an other trip as relatively strong winds resulted in very choppy water - no snorkeling hence. But I made an other important discovery, ginger ice-cream. Yum! Today, Clare and Gordon took me into the very beautiful hills near Brisbane, to Tamborine Mountain. Tropical rain-forest and a very persistent and mean Kukaburra which almost snatched the sandwiches from our plates. To top my time here off we went to a very nice seafood restaurant tonight overlooking the river. To get there we had to take a ferry ride along the river which is actually a very scenic journey itself. Brisbane is indeed a very pleasant place to live! And there is significantly less vanity than in Sydney, the general attitude is certainly much more down-to-earth. Tomorrow, I am off to the red centre, a quite different Australia experience as I expect. What is to come after that, I do not know yet, probably a longish overland journey by bus since I do want to get an idea of the vastness of the Australian continent. So far, however, I do not yet know whether to go north or south from Alice. We will see! I will keep you posted.
| | Some night shots under the influence of a couple of beers. |
 After a pleasant winter in Buenos Aires (six weeks ago) and a nice summer in Berlin (until last week) I now enjoy what is technically late winter in Sydney. When I arrived last Thursday the weather here was actually exactly as good as during the last days in Berlin (20 degrees and sunny), a very smooth transition hence. But I can assure you, it has even improved in the few days I've had here so far! I even have enjoyed almost half an hour bouncing around in the waves today. Not too bad. I am very lucky I can stay with Katharina and Justin on their spare couch in their fabulous apartment very close to the center! Not only did Kat fetch me from the airport, but they also gave me innumerable tips about what to do and where to go in Sydney. On Friday I went along the east coast from famous Bondi Beach down to Cogee Beach, where Justins work-group was having a barbecue. I had a look at the university labs at UNSW (University of New South-Wales) and felt quite reminded of my time in academia... During the weekend I went wandering through the city and saw a very nice Giacometti exhibition in the National Gallery. I spent a few hours reading a book in the beautiful Botanical Garden only disturbed by the incredibly loud squeaking and screaming of rainbow lorikeets and cockatoos flying around everywhere (the latter are just unbelievably noisy!). Today I went together with Anna (who I had met in Argentina a long time ago) first to Palm Beach, the northernmost of the Sydney Beaches, and then from Dee Why Beach back to Manly. The numerous northern beaches of Sydney are just all gorgeous! Then we had a few drinks at Manly Wharf and some jummy Thai food. On the way back on the ferry I got the whole treat of the harbour at night... Yet an other perfect day! Get some more visual impressions here and here.
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