M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S

We are spending Christmas in Pemberton, the southern forest area in Western Australia.
We made ourselves a nice Christmas present by staying in a beautiful luxurious cottage in the tall Karri forest(http://www.peppermintretreat.com)

Merry Christmas to you all and a happy and healthy new year.

Alex and Andy

Perth - what a lifestyle!

We indulge in the Perth beach lifestyle since a couple more than a week now, staying at a friends father's place; sleeping in a real bed, having a real kitchen, a bathroom and actually lights that don't sit on our head.

Every(well almost) morning at 6am, we go down to the beach with Nigel(+ 70 years old). And while he jumps into the ocean for a 20 min ocean swim, we go for a beach run and then for a dip in the water. A whole group of elderly befriended people then meets up for a coffee at the life saving club, they do that since 30 years. Nigel is amazingly fit, both physically and mentally - great inspiration!

Andy and Nigel

Christmas baking made possible - Vanillekipferl
Alex prepares homemade Müsli for the rest of the trip

Pinnacles desert

Thousands of limestone pillars scattered in a moon-like landscape.


Yes, I thought the same...

Waiting for the sunset was worth while.

Crayfish dinner at lake Indoon - so yummy!

Green Head

Swimming, they call it interacting; with the friendly sea lions was a truly amazing experience!!!
We stayed in the water for an hour, wiggling around to animate them to play with us.
And they do come up very close and are so curious and playful.
But watch out for the big male ones, especially during mating season!
They do look very suspicious at you and they are so huge!

We were lucky to witness mating on the beach, which doesn't look very pretty though.





The little ones are so cute!

World Heritage

Shark Bay surprised us with its diversity and extraordinary features.

In Monkey Mia we snorkelled to see a sea snake coming out of the high seagrass, sea kayaked to follow the dolphins, sailed to see the dugongs, visited a seminar to learn about the area, walked in the Francois Peron NP to observe marine life passing by; and we even played tennis, which must have been funny to watch(Andy has to work on his first serve)

The Denham Visitor Centre has a fantastic display about World-Heritage-listed Shark Bay; I think we were in there for hours.

Monkey Mia Dolphines - controled dolphine interacting

Stromatolites - ongoing geological process

Francois Peron NP - watching dudongs from the beach, any questions?

Ningaloo Reef

How good is that!!!!!!

We spent some lovely time at the magnificent beaches along the Ningaloo Marine Park within Cape Range National Park. The beautiful blue water never fails to fascinate. But don’t be fooled by the crystal blue water as it is freezing cold!
Unfortunately at this time of the year, the wind blows pretty strong along the West coast and can spoil once experience a bit. Though the sun is strong, the wind is cold and it’s not possible to stay outside after sunset.

In Coral Bay a branch broke of the tree above and landed on our roof rack right on top of my bike. The constant blowing sound in your ears can actually make you a bit mad! Now, that we got rid of the flies and were even hoping for some cooling down…
Equipped with a wetsuit we snorkeled at the amazingly accessible Ningaloo reef (the outer reef lying only 100m offshore from some parts of the beach). There was wonderful marine life to enjoy, fish swarms and the most colorful and beautiful designed fishes. Sometimes a sea turtle head popped up between stacks of amazing formations of mostly hard corals.
It is a beautiful sight to see an ancient creature, like sea turtle ‘flying’ through the water.
Right now it’s nesting time, the time for the females to come to the beach and start laying their eggs at night time. Even so we found their tracks going up into the sand dunes, we never managed to see one at night time; waiting crouched into the sand hoping to be witnesses of that special moment. Apparently another beach further north was a sight of hundreds of turtles coming ashore…damn it!
By crossing ‘Yardie Creek’ at low tide we continued on to Coral Bay via a sandy track further along the coast, where we had all the romantic beaches to ourselves!(Well, almost) We met a group of guys that spend some time fishing for seriously big fish. And guess what - they gave us a beautiful sautéed Red Emperor fish for dinner. Just like that….that’s Australian!
Not much later they needed our help to get pulled out and start up the car, so that we ended up with two bottles of good wine in addition to our fish dinner…It came in quiet handy as we were slowly running out of food having spent quiet some time away from any supermarket.
To our great disappointment, people still don’t treat those pristine places accordingly and burry their rubbish in plastic bags just the sand…very sad! Sea turtles feed on Jelly fishes, and a floating plastic bag looks astonishing familiar to a jelly fish, you can imagine the outcome.

Coral Bay

Who would have known that we would spend ‘Melbourne Cup’ in a pub in the resort town Coral Bay.
To our surprise the pub was packed with dressed up people, horse racing bets were taken and even a crap race took place, a bit controversial because at least one crap lost a few legs unfortunately.

About to go for the next dive

We came here to dive and hopefully see the Manta Ray, which lives in this area all year around.
It has been three years since our last scuba dive and we were a bit rusty with all the equipment but it went very well! Diving between stacks and stacks of hard corals makes you realize how fragile and delicate a reef actually is. You should hurry up to experience it while it is still alive; it probably will be dead in two centuries…And yes, we met the Manta Ray! We snorkeled above and behind it when it, while it did its feeding roll – with its mouth wide open it graciously rolled over and over again like in a constant summersault to catch the most krill to feeds on. AMAZING!!!

Happy faces after seeing the Manta Ray

Please have a look at our newly uploaded photos on flickr(click on link top right hand corner)

Cheers, Alex and Andy

Karijini and more

Since our last post, we covered a lot of ground and are now down in Exmouth on our way to the magnificent ‘Ningaloo Reef’/Cape Range Nationalpark, one of our Highlights of the trip.
We hope to see big sea-turtles, Mantas, whales, unfortunately we are too late to see the biggest fish in the world - the whaleshark.
P.S.: As it is always me - Alex - writing the post, I will make it easier for me and report from my perspective. Meaning too, you have to cope with my sometimes funny 'Alex-english'.

Cape Leveque, just North of Broome spoilt us with stunning scenery of aquamarine water and white-sand beaches, which we were looking forward to. We spent a lot of time in the water snorkeling around, the sun was so strong that we had to cover up not to get badly burnt lying in the water and watching the colorful seaworld underneath.
Our Beach Shelter at Cape Leveque

One morning while we were still lying in bed and looking out to the see, we were witnessing three humpback whales, playing around and pirouetting out of the water.
What a very special moment!!!

Picnic at Cape Leveque

Andy must have been naughty again!

At some stage I thought I finally get a bush-freakout, when our camp was invaded by the tiniest ants; they were all over my toilet-bag, inside the fridge, all over our roofrack, cutlery box, bags….
Additionally we were visited by an exceptional curious big spider that night which followed me around and even climbed up Andy’s chair…eeeek! But we still will never kill one; we just catch it and release it near another camper….
It was at 'Middle Lagoon' that we met Jessica and Roland from Cologne, which were on there Honey moon along the Westcoast. We had a lovely evening together; Andy and I hadn’t done so much talking in german since a long time. We arranged to meet again in Broome to catch up for the staircase to the moon(which was unfortunately covered by clouds).
Middle Lagoon

At Brooms’ ‘Willie Creek' Pearl Farm we got an inside into Pearlfarming in order to get those world renown Pearls, after the tour we appreciate saltwater pearls now a bit more.

A$100.000 pearl necless, that Andy wouldn't buy for me

We left the beaches behind to turn inland again, where we gave Australia’s hottest town ‘Marble bar’ a short visit before entering ‘Karijini Nationalpark’. And sure enough we saw some spectacular gorges, probably the best we had seen so far. We really liked those ancient geological formations not at least because we had to climb down and scramble along the gorges, swim through water holes to find the hidden track in ‘Indiana Jones’ style.
After what seemed to be a long time in flat country, we even found a mountain to climb up - Mt. Bruce(Punurrunha) at 1235m. Great exercise and great view.
By now we are used to the fact that at least one very active spider (we guess it is the Wolfspider) visits our camp every night after sunset. We might become friends after all!
Karijini NP

On our way to Millstream-Chillchester Nationalpark, we stopped in Tom Price to refill our empty food and fuel storage, have a shower(you wouldn’t believe how dirty our clothes look sometimes….) and drive and ride up ‘Mt. Nameless’. Where I have to ask the question, how can you honestly name something ‘Nameless’? It is paradox; first of all - by the time you call it nameless, you have already given it a name and could have used that time to think about are real name; secondly it already had a name! The Aborigines that had been to the place long time before white Europeans invaded the country, called it ‘Jarndumuha’. It is another great example of the disrespect during the time of early european settlement in our point of view!

Tom Price is yet another mining town, that was established in 1962 and has developed into a leafy green neighborhood with manicured lawns all situated in the most unforgiving interior.
We follow stories about the early European settlers (between 100-150 years ago) with astonishment, it can not be imagined by us today what they had to go through in this harsh and dry country without having any of those modern comforts we are used today.
And again it wouldn’t have been possible without the bush skills of Aboriginal people which didn’t get anything or only little in reverse for as long as the middle of this century!!! We have seen a great deal of old and modern Australian history by now and we have the greatest respect towards the oldest culture in the world, the first Australian inhabitants – the Aboriginals.

After three months it looks like we have developed a travelling routine (in a positive way), we are used to have far less comfort, not having regular showers, turning the underwear inside out and to live outdoors no matter what weather, fighting of flies all the time, getting bitten by mosquitoes, hit by huge bugs that can't navigate and fishing ants out of our food.
Its funny but it looks like we can relax now, we are so relaxed that we are even missing work. We are hooked on playing chess (which I just recently learnt), we can’t stop reading books(finally I take the time to read and read and read) and listening to Harry Potter and other Audio books during the long drive. Apart from that we are very active, go hiking, running, a little bit of riding (not enough though…), swimming and do some core exercise to hold our muscles together for the photos. We talk a lot of our familys and friends here and overseas and what it would be like to leave our Australian friends and life behind. On that note: We miss you all very much!
And last but not least and most importantly, we still like each other very much!

On our way back to the coast, we spent two very nice days at a tranquil water hole at Millstream-Chichester Nationalpark. Our camp was in a lush oasis in the midst of arid, spinifex-covered plateaus. Until a herd of German grey haired tourists arrived, stripped of their clothes to jump naked into the water. We were stunned to see them acting as if they would be alone…We felt a bit embarrassed for our fellow country people.

You have to wait for an update on photos, it takes soooo long to upload them on flickr.com, that I better resize them first.

Cheers, Alex

Broome, Cable Beach

Here we are, this is what we need now!
The beach is only a stone throw away from the Caravan park and we’d like to hang out at the beach, to read and jump into the waves!
.....but not before we've spent 1½ days among our friends in the Industrial areas, the mechanics, to get at least one ‘new’ second hand tyre, our rear indicator light fixed, our second battery replaced and this and that… business as usual which comes with a lot of waiting in offices with pin up girl calenders.

We call our next destinaton a beach holiday, that could make you a bit jealous. The Dampier Peninsula(Cape Leveque) just north of Broome is a transition zone between desert and tropics with white-sand beaches and azure-blue waters!!!! Snorkeling......ahhhh

Note: New photos uploaded on flickr.com, please click at link on top in the right hand corner.

The Kimberley region

The Kimberley was supposed to be the highlight of the trip!
Driving through the very heart of the region along the unsealed Gibb River Road and up North into the most isolated tip, we were looking forward to explore the far North West corner of Australia, which is much bigger than the UK. A spectacular beautiful stretch of the world with a torn and twisted coastline and rugged sandstone ranges; rich in Aboriginal culture and European history. Indonesia was now less than 500km away….











Famous 'Bell Gorge'

But you could tell that by now we were getting a bit tired of the Savannah Woodland and looking at Gorges, it sounds a bit arrogant but that’s the case. This area is magnificent, it’s beautiful, but we were ready to see something else and to spend some time somewhere without sightseeing and moving on every day, fixing flat tyres, hiding from march flies,...- just hanging out.

Back to the Gibb River Road - it can be rough and some parts shake the filling out of your teeth, to our surprise it was quiet busy and there are several cattle stations which have opened their doors to tourism in a big way.











Corrugations....

We were surprised to find top end accommodation and dining in such a remote part. Out of curiosity we camped at popular ‘El Questro Station’ and a little further down the road at Home Valley Station. Coming to this part of the country, strangely water didn’t seem to be an issue any more, sprinklers go day in day out and the last time I have seen lawn as green as here, was in Germany after rain….

The ‘El Questro Wilderness park’ had some nice walks on offer and the ‘El Questro Gorge’ walk was outstanding beautiful(and challenging), with quiet some climbing over big boulders and the most crystal clear water in an unusual rainforest setting!



















'Dusty Bar' at Home Valley Station

After flat tyre No. 4(note we are almost only driving on our spare tyres by now) hundreds of kilometres of heavily corrugated road, we abundant the plan to go up further North to see the Mitchell Falls.
Via Derby -where we had the worst breakfast ever- we made our way to Broome…off to the beach at least!!!
We are missing Melbourne's fantastic coffee- and breakfast culture.

Two steps forward and one back again

We decided that the Bungle Bungle Ranges in Purnululu NP are worth a detour before heading along the Gibb River Road through the heart of the Kimberley’s.
Unfortunately the support bracket of the exhaust pipe broke off again, during the trip along the heavily corrugated entry road.
The previous mechanic in Katherine had done a bad job(but it was the only one that had the time to do it) and we thought surely someone in Wyndham would be able to help out.
Well, I think this country needs car mechanics as they are all so busy that we were forced to go back to Kununarra.... Here we are again!
On the upside, I even 'enjoyed' some riding off-road and along the bitumen road into Kununarra. But the dry heat is not really something that I would call fun, I wonder how people ride along those roads through the centre....it's boring.
While waiting for the car to get fixed, I tried to upload the photos from our trip with the girls, but the connection is so slow that after only 16 new (taking more than 30 minutes) I am giving up now....

Ahead of us are 700km rough Outback offroad!

Alex

From two to five and back to two

Katharina, Jaana, Alex, Rhonda

After three weeks travelling with the five of us, we are down in numbers again. It was most certainly a great time for all of us. Although it was not always easy making decisions about the next destination and activity, but it all worked out well and at the end the farewell was quiet sad.












Andy has seems to enjoy to be the only man with five ladies















Alex with her sister and one giant termite mound













Sunset at Ubirr

' If you respect the land, then you will feel the land. Your experience will be one that you cannot get anywhere else in the world.'
Brian Baruwei - Wurrkbarbar clan. Aboriginal traditional owner.












And yes, it was a fairly unique experience. Therefore we took our time to experience the true beauty of the ancient landscapes and discover the impressive Aboriginal rock art sites.
We even tried our luck in basket weaving with the old ladies(each of us ended up with a braicelet) and had some freshly hunted Magpie goose just from the hot coal.
But the great Outdoors come with the discomfort of dust, great heat and humidity, pit toilets, no showers, flies(oh dear!) and a great deal of mosquito’s(yes!).
The tropical North most certainly put our patience to a test with a great amount of flies and mosquito’s, they seem to have an organized schedule to annoy travellers: As soon as you get up, one has to face an invasion of flies which seem to have no respect as where to sit...and mosquito’s come along as soon as the sun goes down. Wildelife!
In Gregory NP(even more flies), mainly a park for outdoor and four wheel driving enthusiasts; Rhonda, Ina and Jaana proofed to be actually quiet good in tricky offroad driving.

We decided to drive along the Bullita Stockroute (90 km/8 hrs): A loop track where our cars had to crawl over Sharp rocks and tackle very rocky and tide river crossings(without water). But our efforts were worth it: We saw huge Boab trees, fantastic scenery, wild horses, huge bulls, wild donkies and even a skinny Dingo....and no other Tourists.
And Alex finally got a desperately needed bikeride in, riding ahead of the cars...!!
We didn't make it into the Kimberleys as this country is just too big and beautiful to rush through it, therefore we had our farewell in another amazing Nationalpark - Kepp River.

Our visitors were looking forward to a bed, a cool breeze and a nice shower while we were heading into Kununarra to rest for three nights and have a holiday from the holiday....

Darwin - the tropical North

Long time out of Civilization and therefore without Internet. We had an amazing time in the Outback and met many interesting and inspiring people, saw beautiful places in this amazing country. Please read on below on stories of the Simpson desert and the Savannah way.

We are in Darwin, the top end of Australia. And being in a City always means a lot of organizing to do. Soon after arriving we had lots of stuff to do, like servicing our car, getting the breaks of our bikes fixed(even so we almost never ride them), buying a new car battery, battery charger, checking our financial situation., and so on...
Organizing this and that saw us driving around the industrial areas for three days.

After all this ‘housekeeping’ it was time to indulge ourselves with a real bed, bathroom, kitchen and some City life. There are four of us now, Alex' little sister Katharina arrived three days ago and right now acclimatises to the murky heat in this tropic town. Rhonda arrived from Melbourne last night, now we are only waiting for Jaana arriving from Zürich/Switzerland this afternoon.
Our plans are to visit Kakadu NP, Litchfield NP, Katherine Gorge, Gregory NP and if enough time is left we will see the east Kimberley Region together.
With a second 4WD we will head off tomorrow and hunt for some hidden away treasures.
Looking forward to it!!! While the others are going back to Darwin in three weeks time, we will continue through the Kimberleys arriving in Broome in a couple of weeks time. See you then!

Don't forget to check out the new uploaded photos, just click on the right hand corner, where it says "click here".

Barkley Tablelands and Limmen National Park

After the pretty monotonous tableland Hwy - cruising past a single cattle station for a couple of hundred kilometres - we took the rough and rocky Savannah Hwy to get to the Limmen NP. This area with the Roper River amongst numerous other rivers close to the gulf of Carpentaria is every fishermen’s dream and every Barramundis nightmare. We spent three days at Lorella Springs - a hot springs oasis in the middle of nowhere. We spoiled ourselves with having long baths in the hot springs fed pool and the icy cold beer at the bar. We had some nice chats to Darryl the caretaker, barman and host of the place – a true bushmen and friendly bloke.
He even gave us some Barra fillets he fished before as some sort of farewell gift.
We have to say that these Barra fillets, sprinkled with a little bit of flour and just grilled over an open fire in the bush were some of the best fish we have ever eaten in our life.

















Andy commenting on the sunset over Lorella Springs:






















Lost City formation

The best way to meet an Aboriginal…..

Towing them from the side of the road. Yep!
Just before we were planning to stop for the night, we saw a broken down car on the side of the road and an Aboriginal man(Jack Greene) waving for help.
We soon found out that the family of two adults and five small kids were thirsty and hungry after spending there second night in a row on the side of the road. Which meant that many drivers must have driven past not offering any help.... naughty!
They were waiting for a friend(which they were able to call for help) to come down from Borroloola to pick them up.
After carefully approaching the situation we handed out Oranges, Water and crackers to the hungry and thirsty mob.
We towed them up to the next rest area, where we soon prepared dinner for all of us on the open fire.
Curious travelers from OZ and NZ that had stopped at the same rest area, came up to us to contribute food and to tell us that we have done well in doing what we did.
It was obvious that all those people have driven past the broken down car and felt bad about it now.
It was an interesting and nice night chatting to the old bloke Jack, which invited us up to the Borroloola Rhodeo for the next day. Finally their friend arrived that night to tow them up further back home.
The next day we went up to see the Rhodeo and Jack Green with his family. It was a very good day out in the midst of the black and white country folks having a real country day.














Andy singing "Duncan is me mate" with Slim Dusty

Crossed it!

The Simpson Desert

One of Australia’s last great wilderness areas, where hazards include great heat, lack of water and extreme isolation from human habitation and any facilities. The tracks that were made by oil explorers during the 1960s, have become popular 4WD routes.

We soon gave up the plan to drive along the apparently easier ‘Rig Road’ after talking to some people at the Dalhousie Springs campsite. Even though supposed to be the easiest way to cross the desert our limited fuel resources forced us to choose the most direct route: the ‘French Line’. This track runs east-west in a pretty straight line. Due to the prevailing winds the western side of each sand dune is not as steep as the eastern side. This was good for us coming from the west having in mind that more than 1000 sand dunes were waiting for us to be crossed.

We meet two elderly couples - David, Jacquie, Sue and Bob - in Dalhousie Springs who assured us that many vehicles were travelling through the desert and that we might be in good hands driving some distance behind them.

Jacquie and David have been travelling around the world, but mostly around Australia the last 10 years! We were quite inspired by Bob (78) and Sue (75) who were doing these kind of adventurous trip in their old age. They sold their businesses some time ago and caught up with Jacquie and David to do some travelling together like the Canning Stock Route and the Simpson Desert…

Excited and anxious we were just curious whether our car and our driving skills will hold up all right. It is quite amazing how effective it was to just let down the tyre pressure and to roll up and down the dunes with a steady momentum. Due to some inch of rain a few weeks before the red sand dunes and valleys were covered with beautiful wildflowers. It is unbelievable how quiet, isolated and special the place was and how cold it got once the sun went down.

Some kilometers behind ‘Poepples Corner’- the place where the three states SA, QLD and NT meet - we had to fix our first flat tyre. When two cars came up behind us – to our surprise Sue, Bob, David and Jacquie - we thought they would be far ahead of us by now. They told us that they got lost and missed a turn off somewhere, which meant that we were lost, too, without even realizing. We turned around and soon found the right track… we were once again lucky to have met them! Who knows when we would have realized that we were not on the right track anymore. We camped together that night and drove in a convoy together to the long awaited watering hole – the famous Birdsville pub. We all manage the last and biggest dune -‘Big red’ with 40 metre to climb. Our Troopie proofed again it is a real work horse that we can rely on. After 4 days of driving and over more than 1000 dunes we only missed one (reverse back and go up again).

We had a well deserved cold beer and a fantastic pub meal at this iconic outback hotel that night.

The day after the six of us took a very entertaining tour through the impressive exhibition of the Birdsville Working Museum - a must see if you are ever in the area. We also visited the gallery of German born artist Wolfgang John, who lives in Australia since 1959 and moved to the small outback town of Birdsville 15 years ago. He was an interesting chap to talk to and we ended up buying a print of one of his paintings.














carpets of wildflowers everywhere






























































our first flat tyre




























Sue, Bob, Jacquie, David and us

Either you hate it or you love it

THE OUTBACK!
We are well and truely in the middle of it. We have seen some beautiful and historically very interesting places at Mungo Nationalpark or in the old mining town Burra for example. After traveling through the impressive Flinders Ranges with their gently rolling hills, we got our first real Outback experience along the Oodnadatta Track. Here the colours are prominent red, brown, orche, sometimes green and most of the time it's a big open space that makes us looking very small! We are impressed by the people that started mining or working on the railways almost 100 years ago, without water and the conveniences of modern life technologie that we take for granted every day.

The Flinders Ranges











One of the many stunning sunsets(at Copley)












Andy eating Camel and Emu at the legendary Prarie Hotel.















Coward spring, a warm welcoming bath in the middle of nowhere
.









History along the Oodnatta track - Tom Kruse mailrun












The ruins of Farina - a story of failure due to the lack of water