Bye Bye Estelle

The day is hot, really, really hot, you wouldn't believe how hot it really is, I mean, you think your oven is a hot place... it is almost, but not quite, completely unlike the temperature in your freezer. :o)

Anyway, the sun is up, we have a car and we have a Sunday to waste so off we go to Byron Bay, one of Emmanuelle's favourite spots. We look to the east from the most easterly point of Australia and see 2 dolphins and later a pod of dolphins swim in the waves. Estelle really likes this place as well and as I will be flying out to Newcastle that evening and Estelle will be flying back to France the next day, it seems a good place for a last day in Oz.

We race to the airport and with only 45 minutes before my flight I say goodbye to Estelle. Having soaked up the Ozzie way of life Estelle is reluctant to leave.

Who's next to visit us?

Moreton Island

Moreton Island is a bit of mixed blessing. Moreton Island sits between the ocean and the Brisbane shore. Because of that, the water at the Brisbane shores has no waves and is a bit brown coming from the Brisbane River. You have to drive north or south to find beautiful beaches and the true Pacific Ocean.

Moreton is one of the larger sand islands in the word and we decide to visit it. Emmanuelle, Estelle and I are off on a tourist trip to the island. The day is hot, very hot. The boat trip to Moreton takes about one hour. Once we've arrived, we snorkel around a couple of scuttled ships. The lunch is pretty good, and just after lunch I go 'boom netting'.(see picture for that). A little later we get a chance to spot turtles. I'm sure I've spotted 8-10 different turtles in a few minutes.

Lovely Moreton Island has 249 species of birds, a large population of turtles and some dugongs (unfortunately we missed those). We will be back here, because it's just a fabulous place and sooo close to home.

Billabong wave master

Okay so wave surfing, body surfing, diving and swimming was not enough. It's like Mick said: "I can't get no satisfaction". I find a flyer telling me I can go Kite Surfing for a friendly price on a beach nearby.

Turns out the instructor is 24 year old French bloke from Dunkerque. He's been on the Kite world tour for a while and decided to settle for the coming year in Agnes Waters. He's a good bloke and I invited him and his girlfriend to sleep at our house in April.
He knows his shit because over the intercom built in in my helmet he gives me about 4 instruction right to the point and perfectly timed. I pick up his tips and speed off to the sea, thinking about Tiger Sharks in the back of my mind... I passed the International Kite Organisation test with flying colors so now I can rent and insure any kite anywhere. It's good to know it's like cycling: once you know how to do it, you won't forget. It had been 5 years since I last went Kite Surfing...

Okay so still not enough... still no satisfaction... That evening we're off to go kayaking. We get there waaay to late after hesitance whether we should go or not. Once there (we took a shortcut being towed by one of the owners). we see a couple of dolphins and a young and a school of fish jumping at the surface. we kayak-surf waves after a short instruction and do our best to catch one or two. Estelle is really lucky because she's riding with the instructor that takes the Kayak to its physical limits. We see them scream by on the largest of waves. wooo-hooo!

That night I am knackered and go to sleep at 8:30. No need for a beer, no need for a bed-time story. As soon as my head hits the pillow I'm sleeping.

Southern Great Barrier Reef

Early rise, off we go, diving and snorkelling the southern great barrier reef. Emmanuelle and Estelle start out disappointed as the boat leaving next to us is much more luxurious (air co, male AND female toilets and a bar). We have an old diving boat that's slower, without air co and definitely does not have a bar (that pisses me off as well).
We arrive at the barrier reef and spot straight away 3 giant Mantas. That gets everyone's attention, and as the ocean is a perfect flat mirror no-one can resist getting in the water right now! I chose to go diving, Emmanuelle and Estelle prefer to go snorkelling. Imagine this: perfect blue waters, not a hint of wind, mirror flat seas, fish everywhere, a couple of islands in the distance and no noise but the 20 people or so on the boat. Not a bad place to be.

The first dive was okay. We saw what we expected to see on the reef, lots of fish some coral and some sharks.
The second dive is led by an amateur, we get lost in some labyrinth of coral and we get beached... truly beached. We have to crawl over the coral to get back to the deep water. Bhahaha, my new found Israelian friend laughs it out in disbelief.

I propose to my new mate to go together for the third dive, just him and me and try to get to the outer reef. He's been in the Israelian army for 4 years and calls me sergeant and says: 'you lead, I follow... okay?'... 'Okay!' I answer.

So here we go, the diving instructor just told me not to go beyond 14m as this is the 3rd dive and I answer 'sure buddy'. We dive straight to 20 meters and speed off to the outer reef, as fast as we can. We see many, many fish, a really rather large and intimidating gray shark, the biggest shovel nose shark I've ever seen aaaannnddd... Mantas!!! It took a while for my Israelian soldier to recover from the excitement: 'Sarge', he says, 'this was my best dive ever! thanks! these guys on the boat suck, you rock. Thanks!' Being quite pleased with myself I answer, 'at ease soldier'.

By the end of the day we got the following list: the biggest shovel-nose shark I ever saw, a leopard shark, a hand full of manta rays, a couple of huge sting rays (about 2,5 meters across), tuna, gray shark, white tip shark. Emmanuelle and Estelle saw more while snorkelling than I did while diving; they got the giant stingies and the leopard and some of the mantas.

Estelle and Emmanuelle are really, really happy they took this boat and not the touristy one.
What a splendid day. What a fantastic place. The southern Islands of the Great Barrier Reef are truly something to see before you die.

Lesson: don't take the luxurious, touristy one, take the local one.

Estelle

Emmanuelle's sister Estelle made it as the first one to come and visit us here in Australia. Who's next? Emmanuelle took a plane to meet her in Sydney and show her around the Opera House City for a few days.
They arrived on Tuesday evening and we decided to take Estelle to twin towns Agnes Waters and the town of 1770. It's called 1770 because that's where Captain Cook landed in 1770. It's a very small community, I'm guessing around 500 people live here.

The weather stations predict horrible weather with electric-storms, Lots of rain, lots of wind. This does not look good at all. It turns out we have the perfect weather for 4 days straight. Bhahahaaa and you though the weather predictions in Dutchy-land were crap.

The first day we decide to take it easy, shopping, beach, swimming and surfing. Estelle hurt her back while trying to surf and abandons the sport. I keep at it and actually am getting better and better at this sport.

Gargle blaster

My Laptop crashed. Working one minute, blue screen of death the next and my hard drive was reduced from the source of all information to a piece of metal... It felt like the pan-galactic gargle blaster: having you head smashed in by a lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Whack!! ouch. (Gotta read the book the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy to get this one :o)

My Mind refers to its memory banks trying to figure out when the hell my last backup was made. This week? nope, last week, na'ah, o crap, o crap its been 3 weeks. You wouldn't believe how much work, personal information, pictures, e-mails, game scores and favourites you can lose in 3 weeks. Holy shit, what a drama. If you haven't done so: backup you HDD now... Like in right now... stop reading and make a freaking backup straight away. Still reading? Stop that and make a bloody backup.

Sydney Again

I had to go to Sydney for work Thursday and Friday, It’s just a 90 minute flight and I like Sydney so I was looking forward to it. I had a fantastic hotel looking on the Harbour Bridge and a good meal at a Thai restaurant with some colleagues. I was good meeting my mate Audrius from Lithuania again.

On Friday night, I got to the airport a bit early and I noticed the gigantic amount of announced flights, being a numbers man, I started calculating a bit and working with numbers

Okay, so here we go. From Sydney domestic airport there are about 30 planes an hour between 15:00 and 22:00 on a Friday evening and night. On average these planes will fly 150 people each. That makes about 30.000 people on a Friday night. On a 21 mio population that makes that 3 out of every 2000 Australians fly out of Sydney every Friday. Considering cities like Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra and especially Perth, Probably one in every 400 Australians takes a plane on a Friday evening/night. Let me repeat that: that is one in every 400 people (counting kids, old people, everyone) every Friday of every week! And I’m not counting international flights.
The day that flying becomes too expensive is the day that cities like Adelaide and Perth become islands. They are so remote; the only acceptable way to get there is by air.

But fair enough, my return flight from Brisbane to Sydney cost AUD 240, and with today’s currency exchange rate that is 130 Euro for a return flight. If I’m not mistaking that is exactly the airport ax alone at Schiphol. So it is still extremely cheap to fly around Australia.

Yuk! and Yum!

Aussie, aussie, aussie
oi, oi, oi
Aussie,
oi,
Ausie,
oi,
Aussie, aussie, aussie,
oi, oi, oi !

It's Australia day, again, and it’s a very scary thought that already a year as gone by. Only 2 more Australia days left before my visa expires. Ah well, let’s go cockroach racing, drink beer and eat hot dogs. I bought two cockroaches for the races, the first one called: “Rolls Roach” the second “Big Black Cocky”. Neither won but we got close this year. I had bought Cocky number 37, and it had won in an earlier race.
The cockroaches run for their life, women scream whenever a cockroach gets too close and we wave, sing and laugh. (Still need to get the words to the Australian Anthem as I was caught on television camera signing fake words… oops!)

People with a phobia for insects and vegetarians should turn away now and not read the next passage:
One winner grabs his winning cockroach and puts it in his mouth. What’s this, has he gone mad? Is he really, really, really hungry? Did the cockroach offend this man in any way? Nah, the guy was drunk and with Dutch courage and encouraged by camera men and cheering crowds he starts chewing slowly at first. He then opens his mouth to the television camera to show the chewed up roach before spitting the unfortunate bug on the floor.

Yuk!

My wife gave me a brand new barbeque and we decided to break it in on Oz day. (Vegetarians should keep looking away :o) The savory steak was perfectly cooked, the chicken legs very scrumptious and the sausages delicious.

Yum!

Cockroach races

30 years ago Igor from Kangaroo Point and Sven from New Farm were in severe disagreement over the size of the cockies in their back gardens. Over copious amounts of alcoholic beverages the self proclaimed entomologists told tales of behemoth sized cockroaches stamping in the garden and stealing sheep from meadows.

Fearless hunters as they were Igor and Sven agreed to trap one illusive monster from each of their gardens and bring the goliath colossi to the bar for weighing and measuring the next day.

This is where the legend of Igor and Sven becomes a bit blurry: For unclear reasons they decided to race the cockies against each other. Outside the Story Bridge Hotel (about 3 minutes walk from our home) they drew a chalk circle, dropped the cockies in the middle and watch them race.

And thus was born one of Australia's great traditions: the cockroach races, held just outside our apartment building. The event can be ranked amongst the great sporting events on earth: world cup football, NZ kiwi kicking contest, Olympic Games and of course the world series of possum tossing.
I reckon the Kangaroo Point roaches are the biggest: I have seen gigantic claws sticking out from underneath my couch. Now all I need is rope a semi automatic stun gun and a big bag to catch it and to race it at the Story Bridge Hotel in 2 weeks time.

Bondi beach: Surf’s up

Continuing my quest for the treasure and following instructions given to me by anonymous letters we caught a bus to Bondi Beach. There I, the pirate, was to be challenged by the waves of the world’s most famous beach. The captain demanded that I took as many lessons as needed to stand on a board for more than 5 seconds to get the next clue.
We stayed 3 days at Bondi beach, in a suite in a hotel that overlooked the beach (The captain has really done well). The beach is majestic, clear blue/green water, white clean sand aaaand… 10.000 tourists. Surfing is actually not that difficult, after 10 tries I ride my first wave all the way to the shore and after 6 hours of lessons I catch a couple of ‘green waves’ and actually manage to ride the flank. Challenge won, clue received.

I rock! Me big bombastic surf-dude! Me billabong curlz rider, me quick silver tsunami master.

Well, not quite yet, but surfing is really cool and I hope to buy my board soon, to do some more.

Streets of Sydney

The saga continues. The captain keeps sending me clues, indications and challenges which allow us to visit everything Sydney has to offer. The captain made us visit the opera house, the city center, we had dinner in the highest tower, we took the ferry to the Sea side suburbs, we took the city explorer bus, went to see where the rich and famous live, saw the botanical gardens and so on and so on. Too many things to write down, so I’ll write about two of them.

Hand feeding sharks

One of the challenges was to hand feed the sharks at the Sydney aquarium. There were lemon sharks, white tips, shovel heads and guitar sharks. The lemon shark is a big bugger and as if asked he ‘finned’ at the surface to eat the mullet I had thrown in its general direction. “Don’t put your hand in the water” the guide told me. “I have a basic brain function” I replied.

Hotel Party

Our hotel organizes very exclusive parties on the rooftop, next to the pool, with DJ’s, lounge couches, barbeque and bars. The promoter is Absolut vodka, so guess what we were drinking. The people who come here are 20 to 35 years old and behave as if they are very wealthy. Women dress as sexy as the law will allow: The bikinis are so small it barely covers nipples; the bathing suits are basically thongs… not that I looked of course, I only have eyes for my beautiful wife.

NYE 08

Woohoo!! Okay I know how this is going to sound, especially after everything we’ve done in the past few weeks, but… Emmanuelle invited me to Sydney!!! Yaaay!

In a true Pirate, Captain-style story line she led me to my present. She had been sending me e-mails with all kinds of assignment I had to solve, the last solution was DJ236. After kicking my brain into overdrive trying to understand what was meant, the penny dropped and I yelled: it’s a plane ticket!! Yep, and sure enough, 65 minutes later we were taking off to Sydney! I had no idea what to expect and had to follow instructions found under my pillow, given to me by complete strangers or I plainly had to guess. RLRPG (Real Life Role Playing Game)

You’re not going to believe this but we spent NYE08 on a tall-ship in the Sydney harbor between the opera house and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The only ship allowed there was ours! We danced, ate, watched the 21:00 and 24:00 Fireworks, gazed at the opera house and the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people standing on the shores of the harbor wishing they were on our boat. You would not believe how impressive that firework is, you would not believe how well I can dance after a bottle of champagne, you should believe that this was a once in a lifetime wish that came true in the most fabulous way!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Stradbroke Island Christmas

For Christmas we were invited to come camping at my cousin’s, girlfriend’s, brother’s house on Straddie. I bought the cheapest tent in town ($24) and off we went. We had to wait a while at the ferry terminal as the boats did not follow the schedule published on their web site.

During the night the rain woke us up as the cheapest tent was really cheap for a clear reason. We fled our water drenched tent into the house and crashed on the floor. Now, whenever there’s 18 people in any house there’s always someone not sleeping, making noise. We slept about 3 hours that night.
We went diving on the 27th (my x-mas present to Emma) with Manta rays or so they promised us. Well, once we hit the water we got the grand show: I counted 4 giant mantas flying around us.

The mantas are about 4 to 5 meters across and fly around us for the length of the dive. We see turtles, a guitar shark, leopard sharks, stingrays and lots of fish. The second dive was uneventful and a bit boring. I amuse myself sprinkling some sand on an egg nest of a fish and watch the 2 parents being a bit angry clean it out again.

X-mas parties

Emma’s organized a Christmas party for the people she works with and I was invited. These guys are very young and can hold their liquor like a camel holds water. After 5 cocktails each we’re getting the Christmas feeling. A funny hat, a couple of bottles of wine later, we’re signing. One o’clock in the morning it’s time to go to the club… for the youngsters. Emma and I recognize our superiors and crawl back to our home.
As is custom here in Oz the boss invites people to a BBQ at his place. So Emma and I went with a colleague to eat at his place. The food was beautiful (his son is a chef) and I enjoyed myself very much.

Some more rafting and horseback riding

We decide we haven’t had enough and go rafting again on a short – one day rafting trip. The ride down to the starting point is probably the scariest I’ve ever been on. The guide is making jokes but looks worried. We pass a sign warning us: “This road is suitable for specially equipped off road vehicles only.” We’re attempting this with a 2 WD bus full of people, towing a heavy trailer. I’m fairly certain this bus doesn’t fall under the category ‘suitable vehicle’. The sides of the road are 200 meters straight up and straight down. When taking corners baptized “Bus Crash Corner” and “Long way down bend” one wheel of the front of the bus actually hangs in the air! Veeeery scary.
Once down at the river we get to raft on the famous Shotover River. This rafting river has 3 or 4 really big rapids and a tunnel of about 300 meters. The River is extremely rich in gold, and was mined for years. Today there’s still a couple of billion worth of gold here.
Where most people would be drinking beer the rest of the day talking about how extreme this rafting experience was, Emma and I dunk down a hamburger and run to the next pick up location to go horseback riding.
Last time I went riding I crashed my horse, so this time I’m going to take it easy. Moreover Emma crashed her horse too last time she rode so easy does it…The Horse I get is called Zodiac, it’s the biggest horse they have and it’s got a real foul temper. None of the other horses like him and whenever I come near another horse, they run away. You get a bit of a Lord of the Rings feeling riding in these rain forests. The views are splendid and we see some deer run in the bushes.

Milford sound vs Doubtful sound

The tourist folders will show pictures of smiling people in the sun, looking at beautiful scenery. The truth is that it rains here, and it rains a lot! The south western part of New Zealand is called Fjord Land. There are only a very few roads, and walking tracks, most of it is inaccessible.
So how much rain is there exactly? Well… close to 10 meters in some areas. How much? 10 meters, like in 10000 millimeters of rain per year! To give you a comparison: London, known for its rainy weather, gets about 1100 millimeters of rain annually.Doubtful sound was so called because Captain Cook was not sure he would be able to get out of the sound as the prevailing winds are from the West which would mean months of tacking. Milford sound was the last one discovered as it is impossible to see from the sea. Doubtful Sound is the more remote and much less touristic one. National Geographic magazine reporters were here last year to write about its remoteness and beauty. Milford sound is a small town with a very well oiled tourism machine. The boats navigating this fjord are floating observation platforms where tourist can order a double latte, decaf with a twist of lemon. The scenery is very dramatic and beautiful. The seals lay in the wind trying to avoid the sand flies, we see hundreds of larger and smaller waterfalls, the wind from the Tasmanian Sea is cold and clean. I’ve seen the fjords in Norway, but these to me are more dramatic.

Tattoo

I got my first tattoo in the old fashioned and proper 4-step way:
1. Get so plastered your hangover won’t be due till 3 years later.
2. Wobble into a tattoo shop and point at a drawing that looks nice.
3. Point to any part of your body where you want the tattoo.
4. Wobble out of the tattoo shop, back to the pub and show your mates your tattoo.

This helps to take the pain and gather the courage to get yourself a tattoo you might, or might not regret later in life. New Zealand is the country for tattoos so I went to get another one. On my right foot. It hurt like hell. The design is unique as the tattooist (his name is Matt) designed it on the fly. I just asked for a wave pattern somewhere in there as I like water and am an Aquarius.