Byron Bay here we come!

THE KOALA ZOO...

After seeing the grey cloudes in the morning in our wonderful "Johan Oxley Motel" we decided to hit the road again. This time to Byron Bay ("God's chosen land" or so Lonely Planet wants us to believe). This was about 400+ km from the slowish Port city. We stopped at the Koala zoo where we got to pet a koala and feed some kangaroos. There were also some angry black swans that wanted to take a bite out of me! Yikes...but we stayed in one piece and got onto the long drive ahead. Oh, and the car worked like a charm. No probs anymore!

Henkka meeting some friends...

Me running away from some others...the cranky black swans...

Joey and his albino friend...

This is Australia Day weekend (some sorts of independence day, but as they are part of the Commonwealth it's not really...so I guess it's just to commemorate "what if"...). Unfortunately for us that meant most accomodation prices were high and availability low. We settled for a "Miami retirement community" style cabins very close to the hippy center and the beach. Oh, and the beach...at last we found some sand and surf ;) I'll be working on my tan in the next days to come as we are booked in for the weekend. Henkka already managed to burn his nose in Sydney (looking like a drunk Finn, "Puliukko")...and today he followed with his back. So after shopping some aftersun we decided to hit the surfing tomorrow. That'll be fun...let's see if I remember anything! We are keeping in mind the lessons learned from the past weeks headlines...if a shark attacks, go for the eyes!!! I know my sister would agress (yes, you Sandra!)

The new cabin...

So, write more to you guys after our surfing adventure....

Car shopping and the Blue Mountains

Today we got the car! We spent the weekend in Parramatta (aborginal= where the eel lies down) taking the sweaty trains back and forth into Sydney city, walking up and down the car lots looking at the potential cars. Pretty soon we realized we had been a bit too optimistic in the price range of used cars. After many cars, sellers and liters of water in the baking sun we found a prospect, a Jeep Cherokee. Not what we where after and a lot more expensive but being the careful Finns we are we wanted the proper paperwork and use the right dealership (to avoid it coming to bite us in the ass). Even after all precations we still spent the next three days in making reparations on the car. Nothing big, but there were still a lot of annoyances. Nevertheless, it wasn’t brain surgery after all and we where on our way. I personally would have wanted to see Backpacker’s Traveller’s autobarn’s guys face as he was offering us a lousy Holden without any light-beams or side-mirrors for a few grand less…What you need to do is the same as in Finland, get the car checked out, see the paper work, get the car registered (make sure you have an address which you can prove you are living at in Australia…this we had a lot of problems with so I just had to charm the old Indian lady to giving us the permits) and get insurance. Then you are ready to go.
The car...Jeep Cherokee 4.0l

Blue Mountains – 110km North-West from Sydney

We took our “new” old car along the Great Western Highway from Sydney to the small mountain town of Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. On the way we had a chance to test out the car with limited success. At about 80-90 km/hrs the car shook so hard we thought the tires were flying off while acting normal at all other mileages’. We swore at our bad luck and hoped it didn’t mean there was anything too bad going on. Henkka also had fun trying to keep on the left side of the road and not having driven an American car before (nor very much 4x4) it took some getting used to.

Arriving in the Blue Mountains there is a beautiful lookout point called Echo Point which draws all the tourists. When we got there in the late afternoon it was overrun by noisy Chinese tourists by the busload, trying to get an “echo” out of the valley. It didn’t really work as we were all standing on the top of the mountain, but having been in their country you tend to forgive them all the idiots and pushes. Nevertheless, it was a great view up there seeing the old “three sisters” rock formation which was a mandatory Kodak moment.
Echo Point
Us at the lookout...

We found a room in a hostel called the “Flying Fox” after looking around town. Almost everything was closed as it was Monday (not a big open-hours day for the very touristy mountain retreat!) It was a chilly evening in the mountains with even a few rain drops to our amazement. Is there supposed to be rain in Australia????!!! We walked around town and had a great meal in small vegetarian restaurant with the very Australian BYO (bring your own drinks) policy. We have quickly adapted this to be one of our favorite Australianisms as this means we go to a huge chain store called very accurately “Liqoureland”, you buy your cheap bottle of wine and bring it to your restaurant of choice where they charge you a “corking fee” of 1-3$ to open your bottle. Perfect and so cheap! This means we are having wine quite often, but we are doing a lot of walking too ;)
Blueberries grow on trees "downunder"...

The “Flying Fox” was ok with a big free breakfast the next morning with some French girl going insane in the kitchen making pancakes for everybody. I had the worst coffee there and missed my daily Starbuck’s coffee a lot! We started the day with a trip in the “Scenic world” down an old coal miner’s railway into the bush. I wanted to see the “real” bush and convinced Henkka to take a hike off the track into the bush through a rocklavine. It wasn’t for the weak-hearted as the terrain was quite rough with nobody in sight. I had a trusty snake-stick anticipating a duel with some poor creature. Unfortunately the only ones we saw were a parrot and some other birds. I tried to find the snakes but no luck! We also took a cabin ride across the valleys which shoed a great view of the tall tree tops. Below in the rainforest they have truly commercialized their nature reserves by making long wooden paved walk-ways through the jungle with plaques informing the lazy uneducated tourists of what they are staring at.
The hike begin...
Henkka gets thirsty...
It's steep here...
Henkka gets cold????!!!
I show the way with my "snakestick"...

After our hike we took the car to the mechanics for a checkup of the tires. They stabilized the tires and in doing so solved our “shaking problem” of the car! It was cured! We took the scenic Bell’s highway out of the mountains to Sydney. The back road was filled with out back farms with fruit farms and cows. We stopped and had really good apple pie and burgers at a farm with big spiders hanging in their outdoor toilets (brrr…scary…). A storm hit and we spend the afternoon in rainshowers. We got lost with he car in Sydney and ended up in checking into the most awful highway motel I’ve ever seen called Formule1 (part of the Accore-chain). It looked like a Viking Line cabin even with the crappy toilets…just awful. But with the forest fires around Sydney we couldn’t get out to the countryside and a lot of the motels were filled out. We had awful fast food at “Hungry Jacks” and watched the news in horror with headlines as “Young boy in hospital after venomous snakes charge”, “man survives shark attack after poking its eyes”, “Pitbull attacks owner” and “Japanese voyeur caught filming girl backpackers in hostel showers”. There’s a lot happening here all the time…
The sad, sad view from the highway motel...
The smoke remains after the forestfires...

Today we spent in the car, driving up the Pacific Highway to a small harbour city called “Port MacQuerie” about 350 km from Sydney. Most of the fires have died around Sydney with only the smoke to remind us of the damage. I even saw a dingo next to the road, but my camera was too slow…
They have some serious road compaigns here...
Some more warnings...

We researched all the budget accommodations in town and ended up at a motel owned by a friendly Romanian guy called Ivan. Then we had some great Italian food at Café 66 ( I got my giant shrimps at last!!!)…Tomorrow we are going to the Koala Sanctuary and I will get to hug a slow one. I’ve read that the Koala is the only animal that has a smaller brain than its cranium pretty much making its brain rattle loose in its head. That’s why they move so slowly…weird. We’ll let you know how it goes but I am hoping that those wonderful beaches we saw while coming into town will be baked in sunlight tomorrow so that we can, at last, hit the beaches AND GET A TAN!!!
Our arrival in Port MacQuerie...where the convicts landed...
Henkka taking it easy at the "Oxley Motel"

At last, I get my SHRIMPS!!!!

Jetlagged in Sydney

Welcome to Sydney ;)

We started out our first day in Sydney by doing a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city. In the hour and a half bus tour we saw most of the big sights including the opera house. Somehow we managed to stay interested, but dozed off in the afternoon at our lovely (?) Chinese hotel. We only slept a few hours the night before as our room looked out to a car park where nightly work was being very, very noisily conducted at 3 am. The fridge we learned should be turned off every night to avoid nightly heartattacks from the sudden noises, and the toilet should be flushed regularly (even when not in use) to stop the water from pouring. Three stars is a bit different down under...

The second day we again spent in sleepless frenzy. We wanted breakfast at 4 am, but no luck. Nothing happens here until about 8 am. So we watched bad sitcoms on the laptop and waited and waited. After breakfast we had a tour of Bondi beach. That was great, but we kinda realised that the very hot streets of Sydney would not keep us long interested as the waves beakons...

As the day before we walked and walked the rest of the day. Improving those leg muscles and making us nearly scream of pain in the evenings of muscle spasms. All those long evenings in the office sure didn't prepare us for these marathon walks!

We escaped the heat in the airconditioned Sydney Aquarium where we dutifully took notes of the many hidden dangers lurking in Australia's blue waters. Too many and too scary to even phantom...

On Friday we decided that we had been lazy enough and now was the time to get our crap together. We started by opening a bank account. Now this was a relatively painless experince although gotta hand it to the tellers that working in a office with no air-con seemed excruciating...In Australia you need a local phone number AND address for everything. And keep your passport handy because even the pre-paid phone cards only work after a twenty minute phone interview. No reason given why all this is needed as you've already paid the card.

After this was done we decided to hit the car markets targeted for backpackers. Well, needless to say that was an original experience as we were told we couldn't buy a car (cause there weren't enough on sale) that buying a car privately or from a dealer would be too difficult and that dealing with the national transport authorities way too difficult for us to understand. This naturally enraged us. Buying a car (especially in an English speaking country...and in a developed one for that matter) ain't exactly rocket science! But we were told at the popular and Lonely Book favorite "Backpacker's Car market" that we were going to hit trouble if we didn't let them do everything for us. We were offered two crappy cars that probably would have left us stranded in the middle of Sydney with an equally crappy buy back. No thanks! We decided to either get on a bus or train, but get out of Sydney we would (but not in their worned down Holden...). In the afternoon we strained ourselves in the Wildlife Zoo. Yet again we eagerly learned about the dangers in this country, but this time those on land. So basically wherever you are here, you're in danger. Great. But no worries, we now know what to look out for. We even saw the deadliest organism in the world, the box jellyfish which to our relief has an anti-venom. Unfortunately this must be be administered almost immidiately after exposure by a professional so that doesn't really help unless you get stung outside a hospital...

Coming Soon...