Quite a bit has happened since the last post. We rented a little car (Toyota Corolla, which here is actually about half the size of that in the US) and after getting used to driving on the "wrong" side of the road, went on our little trip to the Great Ocean Road. An absolutely amazing piece of earth! The landscape is just stunning, ranging from temperate rainforests to beautiful beaches and rough cliffs. The weather was not always perfect, but that also meant that we didn't have to share the place with as many tourists. The first night we stopped in Lorne, a nice little town by the beach where we found a beautiful Bed & Breakfast. Due to the queen's birthday it was a long weekend here and contrary to what we overconfidently expected, we could not find a hostel that had any vacancies. So we splurged at this B&B with spa and champagne breakfast instead. Very nice! The second night we spent at a hostel that was quite overrated in the books from what we saw ... similar to the town it was in. Thus, a piece of advice: the city of Warrnambool is small, dead, boring, overpriced and can easily be skipped when touring Australia.



After a ride back through the countryside (real Australian farmland, oh boy!) we arrived safely in Melbourne for our last night there. As a small "thank you" we took our hosts out for dinner and ...get ready fellow vegetarians... Patrick actually had a taste of kangaroo! Patrick ate Skippy! Very tasty, he says. Somewhere between a good steak and a pork chop. To me it looked like the rare version of the sweet animal we had fed just days earlier. :-(

Wednesday morning we got a very early flight to Sydney with Australia's version of Southwest. Uncomfortable, but otherwise smooth, it was a short flight to a much warmer (17-18 C or around 65 F) city that also feels a lot bigger and busier, more urban and ...forgive the word...wordly. From what I've seen so far I can say I LOVE Sydney! It has got a really nice feel to it and it's hard to really say what it is. Good-mood-weather (17 C apparently is freezing for Sydney), beautiful quiet neighborhoods, bustling downtown, amazing beaches, great harbor, big parks, surrounded by mountains and ocean - I am utterly impressed, almost to the point where I can say I could imagine living here (although...I'm not moving across the ocean again quite yet). Sigh...

We've got one more day to be enamoured by Sydney and then it's off to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef in the north before we return to Sydney for one day to say good-bye and head to NZ. Those four days (Saturday through Tuesday) in the tropics will likely be our only real beach days, so we'll get a big bottle of sunscreen and get ready for some snorkeling :-)

Attached are some pictures of the last days. The first two are at the Great Ocean Road, the last one is taken at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

That's about it, I believe. I'm quite tired and off to bed, it's been a day of lots and lots of walking again.

More soon. Good night!