melissa

So we left Townsville in the early morning and arrived in Alice 30h later. I will not bore you to death with details of my bustrip! Nor have I taken any pics to show you the monotony of a 30h bustrip... which shoud have lasted only 27h, but we got stuck in Tree Ways because the bus bringing us from there to Alice had left Darwin 4h late. Enough now!

so on the 11th of Sept we were in Alice Springs , where firstly we did absolutly nothing... well, what would you do after 30h bus!On the twelfth we did more of nothing and on the 13th we were off to uluru.

sunrise on the way to Uluru

We left with a little bus at 5.10am and one hour out of Alice CBD we .... broke down and waited for 3h for the other bus to take us where we had to go. 'Luckally' we broke down at a roadhouse and by fortune there was a show on just a bit later... we could go and watch Dinky the singing and piano-playing dog! (BTW this is the answer to one of the Trivial Pursuit questions!). Later in the day we went to Kings Canyon where, unfortunatly, we couldn't do the long walk to the top because of lack of time and only did the easy (and boring if I may say so) walk.

Kings Canyon

In the evening we sat at the fire (for about 5 mins and then everyone wanted to sleep)

We did sleep in swags under the stars! Wonderful!!!!

Next day we got up at 4.30am to see the sunrise at uluru rock. Unfortunatly I cant show you any pics coz my batteries were dead by that time (although I HAD charged them the night before!). So I took pics with Celien's camera, but I dont have them here.
In the afternoon we then went to visit the Olga's or Katja Tutja (again no pics, sorry!)
We spent one more night in Alice and then went off to Darwin!

So got up at 4.40am and drove most of the day (we had to do lots of k's to get to darwin, so lots of driving, not soo much to see). In the afternoon we did see Devils Marbles at Kurla Kurla.

and a bushfire (somewhere along the way, dont know if it was the first, second or third day of our trip)

At our stop in Daly waters we were in for a good surprise. There was a rodeo going on. You know one of those real ones where everyone weires hats

On our last day we did a kayakingtrip in amazing Kathrine Gorge

We arrived late in [Darwin and went of to have dinner with the group at Stokes Hill Warf, finally ate my first Barramundi, must admit it wasnt bad at all!

For the last part of our trip we went to Kakadu. I'm just gonna give you some pics here, coz words are unnessacary (and also involve me typing and being creative... not gonna happen right now!)

Jibary bird

big croc

sunset (yeah, another one, I know)

Aboriginal rock Art

And now we're in DARWIN!!!! yes yes yes yes yes, I made it! on the 25th I fly to Sydney and on the 30st I start flying home!

so probably wont write anymore from oz... but see you later anyway
Melissa

Allright, third time good time! I'll really try this time to finish everything untill here, here is in Darwin and I've got one month and a half of travelling to catch up on, so it's gonna be a long one!

Here we go...

Fifth of August I left Childers, snif snif... Naaahhh, just joking, it was more like HALLELLUJAAAAAHHH (and I'm a not-believer!). Anyway got to Brissie and stayed there for a couple of days on my own while I was waiting for Celien to arrive on the 10th of August.
Of course I was too late to pick her up (I got used to the layed back and relaxed Ozzie life-style, so no rushing!). Anyway once she was there we moved hostel to this great place at West End called "Somewhere to Stay" (I really recommend it if you would ever come to brissie!)

vieuw from our balcony

We didn't do that much, but we managed to buy a buspass and go to the Ekka Festival in Brisbane (of course we did go to botanical gardens, but that's already the third - actually make that fourth time - I've been in Brissie, so lets go over it really quickly).

Ekka Festival

19th of August we finally left for Noosa. We checked into the YHA which is really a very nice hostel. Unfortunatly we arrived in Noosa in the rain so didn't do that much. 20st August we did a walk in the National Park = gorgeous!!

Celien left on the 22nd August to Fraser for three days while I stayed in Noosa for one more night and then on the 23rd left to Rainbow Beach. Rainbow Beach was .... FLOODED! I dont have any pics of the place coz my camera isn't waterproof and seeing as we had to swim from one building to the other in Rainbow... Anyway, Celien came back from Fraser looking as a drowned cat, but she had loads of fun she said. All I did in Rainbow was reading the latest Harry Potter (jawel, kheb hem al gelezen, nanananeire!).

The 25th of August we went to Hervey Bay. We didn't stay for long coz we didn't have lots of time, but it was btf! And finally we could enjoy the sun! We also stayed at the best hostel I've been staying at in OZ untill now ... the Woolshed!

27th of August we went on to Rockhampton. We wanted to visit Great Keppel Island but ended up doing a tour at a cattle farm! Great tour (was called Dave's Capricorn Tour if I'm not mistaken) and I'll let the pics talk for themselves!

Bulls

Redback spider

dead forest

Me and Hetty getting acquainted

Hetty and me getting close

Hetty and me saying goodbye

Kangooroo's

jughead-like-animal-cant-remember-right-name-though

Whaaawhaaahaaawhaa...is all the comment I can give!

On the 29th we went on to Airlie beach where we went sailing! Perfect perfect perfect... mum, dad could I have a sailingboat for my New Year? We went for two days, two nights, here are some pics...

sunset 1

Whitehaven Beach

our boat, the Boomerang

my toes

After Airlie we went on to Cairns on the 4th of Sept (I think) and stayed there to recover from all our travels. We did go to Cape tribulation and did an incredibly great diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef.
Some pics of Cape Trib:

After that we went back south to Townsville and visited Magnetic Island. Very btf (I find myself to be very repetetive... beautiful this, beautiful that... incredible!)
No pics though, coz too many pics to upload! and from there... see next entry!

hello everyone!

I'm back... first things first: I have some things to show you from Childers:

First of all a typical saturday (don't forget there was nothing to do in Childers apart from work from sunrise till sunset)

And here is a little resume of my last workingday in Childers:

melissa wakes up ... 5.00 am

Melissa is getting ready (and pretty grumpy since it's so early)

Of course life looks better after a coffee

And it keeps on getting better when I see the other ppl actually look as bad as I do in the early morning....

... or even worse :D

Then it's time to drive to work...

pitchblack, isn't it!

At 9am we get our first break

Lunchtime looks quite similar

this is how our workplace actually looked

And look at how fast I'm working!!

Then by the time we get to clean the rollers it's the end of the day ... jahooo!!!

Last drive back to Caravan Park

Quick overview of my workingclothes:
field outfit:

shed outfit:

Sorry, that's it for now, I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible!!

love ya all
Melissa

Hi everyone!!

Just to give you some news from down under.
I'm staying in Childers as I said before. It's a little town, looks a bit like Gympie where I've been the first time I came to OZ. Basically it's got one street with shops and bakeries and stuff like that and there are 3 pubs and there is the caravanpark I'm staying at. Life in Childers is very ... repetetive! I work at an avocado-farm (4th job here in Childers) and every morning I get up at 5 o'clock to get the bus at 5.50 that drives us to the shed where we start working at 6.30 am (good thing about getting up so early is that I never miss the sunrise!!). We pack the avocado's for about 10h a day and half an hour after we get back the sun sets again and it gets (freezing) cold again!
WE sleep with three ppl a room and I've got some great roomies, so I'm happy. We usually don't work sat and sun so on friday- and saturday-evening we often have "spoon"parties. When my roomie gets a bit drunk she can't pronounce 'goon' (the very cheap wine for anyone that hasn't encountered it yet) anymore and calls it "spoon" ... therefore "spoon"party! Anyway here are some pics...

Lea on the phone

Lea's sad because she's leaving us

Lea and roomies at spoon-party

Our sole entertainer at Childers, our housepet the carpet snake

I haven't done much else here and I'm leaving the 5th or 6th of August to join Celien in Brisbane so we can start travelling together up north!!

anyway, can't wait to leave this place in three weeks with loads of money!!!

I will keep you up to date!
catch ya later

sunset at fraser island

Right, we're back... so I'll just pick up where I left of last time.
The 5th of may I was still on Fraser of course! We got up early and had brekkie and than we went to Lake Wabby ... memories!!

Fraser Island, Lake Wabby

Only this time we did it the other way around then 5 years ago. This time we got dropped off at the lookout point and walked down to the lake where, again, we had about 45min to take a dip in the lake and work on our tan. Then we crossed the "desert" (just a tiny little one, but still pretty hot) to the beach and went for another swim in the sea... with the sharks apparantly. The pilot of the little planes at fraser told our guides later that, while they were surfing - before we got to the beach - they spotted a shark at about 5m from the place they were surfing. And 5 mins later we arrived and swam out there... good we didn't know at the time! We then drove on to Eli Creek where, oh yes you guessed right, we had another swim down the creek (just to wash of all that salt) and then we stopped over at the Cathedrals to have lunch. After that we went to Indian Head, that's a great lookout point to spot all sorts of sea wildlife. We saw a ray, some sharks, a turtle (I think) and some dolphins from up there. Then it was time to head back to the jetty to watch yet another beautiful sunset. And the next morning we headed back for Brisbane.

We stayed in Brissie for one night and then took the train and the bus and the boat and the bus to Amity Point at North Stradbroke Island... Yes, it was a whole day of travelling.

sunset on North-Stradbroke

We stayed at the Amity bungalows for 5 days and our days mainly existed of long walks on the beach and dinner at the restaurant 2 blocks from the bungalow, so I'm not gonna make long comments about it>

North-Stradbroke, Lookout Point, Gorge Walk

The 12th of may we again took the bus, the ferry, the train to brissie to catch our plane to Cairns where we arrived quite late in the evening. On the 13th we explored Cairns and found that Cairns can be explored in half a day, so we booked some trips around Cairns for the following days.
14th of may we went to Kandura with the scenic train,

scenic train from Cairns to Kandura

and visited a coffee-farm (interesting and beautiful views) and a banana farm... (not so interesting, no btf views) and stopped over on the way back to cairns to feed the wallabies (cute!!)

Wallabie and Joey, plz ignore ugly legs! (no, they're not mine!)

wallabie

On the 15th of may mum and dad went looking for other, more quiet accomodation, and the 16th of may we left for a two day-trip to Undura.
It's a beautiful National Park where you can go and visit the lava-tubes (very ... huge) and see a gorgeous sunset (yes, one of so many, but honestly you can never get enough of it!). So on the 17th of may we got back to Cairns and the next day we went to Green Island to see the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunatly we didn't see so much of the reef, coz it was low tide and that meant there wasn't lots of space to snorkel or for the glassbottom boat to manoeuvre. But it was still a beautiful day. Back in Cairns I met up with Maria and we had a really fun and big night out.

And then it was time to fly back to brisbane and stay for one more night and then me mummy and daddy flew back home... snifsnif. Okay, well not completly snifsnif maybe, but I was still sad to see them go.
I checked in in the Palace Backpackers and two days later I came to Childers and started working... and that's it for now folks!

Hope to hear some news from your side of the world soon!