G'day mates!

After a short flight from Fiji we arrived safely in Sydney Australia (with our luggage this time)! Initially we thought about taking a bus to Melbourne as this was where we were supposed to meet Marco and Nik, our good friends from Amsterdam, who decided to come visit us at the other side of the world. However, when we landed in Sydney we had a look around for immediate flights to Melbourne and found out that this was not at all expensive. So a couple of hours later we boarded a late flight to Melbourne!

However, our joy turned out to be premature..... because as we arrived in Melbourne, we waited for our luggage... Mischa's bag arrived...and we waited...and waited some more...and then waited even more...to find out that Thomas' luggage did not arrive. 'Not again' was our first and most prominent though!!! Remember Fiji? Grumble!! We went to the left luggage desk and were told that this was oh so very common. The baggage handlers in Sydney were on strike and they advised us to wait for the next flight from Sydney, because maybe Thomas' bag was on the next flight. So we waited...and waited...and waited for about two and a half hours, covering the arrival of 4 more flights from Sydney...but no bag!! Bigggg grumble!! Eventually we gave up, tired and exhausted and left our info details at the Qantas counter (were we did get a very nice overnight sleeping pack, of which Thomas still very proudly wears the Qantas short....) and grabbed a bus towards the city centre, in a rather foul mood.

Backpacking wise, Australia is completely and utterly different from all the other places we have been to. Most strikingly, all the hostels were almost always fully booked. We basically called ALL the hostels in our guidebook and were told off, even the dorms were completely booked!! Australia started to have a negative feel to it. Finally we found a place called Greenhouse Backpacker (www.greenhouse.melbourne-hostels.com.au/index.jsp) with about 600+ beds, where we ended up in a dorm with 10 beds. WE HATE DORMS!! Mischa is just too much of a prima Donna for it & Thomas just loves his privacy!! The next morning we had breakfast with about 200 other people in a huge kitchen area, in true industrial style, total pandemonium. Now you have to realise that we had just spend 6 weeks in paradise, almost always being the only guests with our owl kitchen facilities while overlooking the big beautiful sea. So we really felt horrible and quite depressed. Guess what: first thing on the agenda was to find a better accommodation. Luckily we found a double room in a nice place called City Centre Budget Hotel (www.citycentrebudgethotel.com.au) which was also located right next to the Windsor hotel where Marco and Nik were going to stay (www.thewindsor.com.au). Furthermore Thomas' luggage was found and delivered so we were more than ready to go out and enjoy the city!!

The next morning was D-day. Finally, after almost 9 month we were going to see two familiar and very longed for faces!! Actually we were a bit nervous as we took the early morning bus to Melbourne airport. And there they were!! Yichaah!!! Looking oh so white and tired, contrasting sooo heavily with our tanned and rested demeanour. Hi, hi... no, it was really great to see Marco and Nik again, especially as we had been planning it for such a long time (Marco and Nik, we really had a great time and already miss you guys!!).

After a quick clean-up session, the four of us hit downtown Melbourne and went for a great lunch on the South Bank. Obviously, the vino was flowing rapidly, which would set the standard for the next three weeks...;-) In order not to bore you here follows a short recap of our activities during the next 4 days:

• Melbourne Acquarium (http://www.melbourneaquarium.com.au/);

• Shopping & great diner in Fitzroy;

• next morning more shopping in St Kilda (Thomas says: 'oooooh no, not agaaaaain!!!') & great lunch in St Kilda (Kangaroo burgers!! Mjummie);
• Coffee and funny time at St Kilda Peer;

• Another great diner in Fitzroy at Little Creatures Dining Hall (www.littlecreatures.com.au) where they had the largest mussels that we have ever seen (see below)!!!

• Lunch at Southbank again...
• Shopping in Chinatown (Thomas says: 'noooooo, not again, it huuurrts!!!');
• Drinks at Rooftop Bar and Cinema (www.rooftopcinema.com.au);

• Shopping (Thomas says: 'pleaaase kill meee, kill meeee!!' & lunch in Fitzroy again, where we discovered the Bubbly Shiraz (pronounced: 'Shyeraz' in Oz...;-));
• Picknick at the open air Moonlight Cinema were we watched 'Marley and Me' (yes, the one with Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson...sob sob) in Melbourne's Royal Botanical Gardens together with about 2000 Melbournians, which was great fun!!

The next day we set of in a rented car for the Great Ocean Road, Victoria's famous southwest coastal road, which was build at the beginning of the 20^th century with the idea of constructing a scenic road of world repute, equalling California's Pacific Coast Highway...hmmm, yeah right!! The first hoax is that it actually does not always follow the coastline so we spend half of the time driving in a forest area, making us double check whether we had actually taken the wrong turn and had ended up on 'The Great Forest Road'...;-)) The main highlight of the Great Ocean Road is 'The Twelve Apostles, the dramatic rock formations which sit out to sea beyond rugged cliffs'. This is the second hoax...In fact, you can only observe 8 Apostles at any time, because the rest are apparently hidden (??!!), at least that is what the sign said. Furthermore, it was probably the touristiest natural sight that we have seen in the past year. In general, bus-loads with tourists arrive here each day as all of them gather on large platforms constructed on the cliffs, trying at the same time to get a nice picture with the 8 Apostles in the background....in addition to this, we had really bad weather with lots of clouds, wind and just freezing cold. All in all, we were a little bit disappointed, although the pictures would make you think differently...;.)

By now, it was 5 o'clock pm, we had been driving for almost 6 hours straight from Melbourne and still needed to drive 2 hours to Lorne were we were going to stay overnight in a beautiful little hostel called Erskine River Backpacker. This is when it hit us: Australia is huuuuuge!!! What seems like a tiny distance on the map is often many hundreds or even thousands of kilometres. Very deceiving!! Up til now we had only done the width of one or two fingers!! Our initial plan was to slowly drive up the East Coast towards Sydney (we had 3 days for this). However, as we entered our first intended stopover, Malacoota (which is not even halfway to Sydney), in our Garmin, we found out that it would take us at least 15 hours to get there (!!!)... none of us was looking forward to spending the next 3 days full time in a car!! So, we needed to drastically revise our plan and over diner at BB and Grill in Lorne (www.bbarandgrilllorne.com.au), we had an epiphany, opened the Lonely Planet and the Rough Guide and started looking for nice stopovers along the highway that runs from Melbourne to Sydney straight through the Australian wilderness. It did not take us very long to decide on the first one... exactly at halfway point is a wine region, situated around the town of Rutherglen. Tataaah, this was where we would go!! We left early the next morning and arrived in Rutherglen around 0100pm. Very conveniently, we had booked a 4 person apartment on the Rutherglen Estate winery (http://www.rutherglenestates.com.au/) and after a couple of hours in the pool, it was time to do what we came for: wine-tasting!!

We ended up buying a number of great wines including a few fantastic bottles of Marsanne, Zinfandel and of course the bubbly Shyeroz. The estate also featured a gourmet restaurant (included in the price of the apartment) with an all you can drink winebar...Though tempting; we kept it quite relaxed and had another lovely evening with the best company!!

The next day, we covered a lot of ground and spend the night in a town called Huskisson, right on Jervis Bay, an alleged highlight of New South Wales (see below). And although it was a pretty little village, the place was deserted and we somehow had the feeling that it had had better times. We ended up staying the night in the hostel linked to the largest pub in town called the Husky Pub (www.thehuskypub.com.au), a huge pub with beer-tables, game-rooms (so called TABs), casino-slots, TV's everywhere and a big signs saying that you should watch out that nobody puts GHB pills in your drinks...dodgy...very dodgy...but lots of fun (and typical Australian as we later found out). We suspect that they normally don't rent out rooms to tourist but that the rooms are mainly used by drunken regulars who cannot drive home anymore after a night of slamming away the brewsky's. The floor in our room made you believe that some of them had not quite made it to the communal toilets after getting sick... Dodgy as it may be during high season, we were the only guests together with a couple of spinsters and the bar actually closed at 11.00pm. By pure luck we stumbled on a restaurant that night called Seagrass (http://www.seagrass.net.au/) which had been chosen the best restaurant in New South Wales (including Sydney) in 2006 and we indulged on another great gourmet meal!!

After three days, we were finally back in Sydney. Marco and Nik had booked a room for us in the same hotel they were staying, called Quest Potts Point (www.questpottspoint.com.au). Although the price was well above our budget, it was wonderful to savour in the luxury that we were used to from another life, with a nice, clean and comfortable bed, ensuite bathroom, cable TV (and on demand movies - we watched 5!) and air-conditioning, just great!! So here follows a short summary of the highlights of our 4 days in Sydney:

• Night-stroll through Oxford Street, Darling Harbour, The Rocks and Circular Square;
• Diner at Bar Reggio in Sydney's little Italy (www.barreggio.com.au) where you had to make a reservation at the entrance and they would call you when your table was ready and beers and live rockmusic at The Porterhouse (http://www.porterhouse.com.au/)
• Daytrip to Circular Square and Manly (20 minutes by ferry) with diner at a beautiful place called the Kiosk, right on Shelly beach (http://www.lekiosk.com.au/)

• Daytrip to the famous Bondi Beach, Tamarama Beach and Bronte Beach (although there was no way we dared to enter the water given that 3 swimmers and surfers had been attacked by sharks on Bondi beach the weeks before...) followed by drinks on our own rooftop terrace;

• Daily fitness sessions at Fitness First (lots of gays around getting in shape!!) which featured beautiful views over Harbour Bridge and the Opera House.

One of the main reasons that we choose to visit Sydney during this specific time was that the weekend of 7-9 March is the finale of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festivities. Mardi Gras started in 1979 as a political march commemorating New York's Stonewall riots. It has evolved into a month long arts festival that culminates in a fleshy street parade on the 7^th of March. The parade begins on Elizabeth Street around 7.30pm and cavorts the length of Oxford street. Gays from all over the world and lots of people from Sydney gather in the area to witness the spectacle. And so did we!! Obviously we were used to the lavish Gay Pride Parade on the canals in Amsterdam, which is all about being as extravagant as possible. In the past, the Mardi Gras parade had also been all about extravaganza. Unfortunately, the organisers of the parade this year had decided to make it more political, hammering more on human and gay-rights issues, abortion, euthanasia, you name it. Of course we did support this with all our heart. However, we feel embarrassed to say that it made the parade a bit lacklustre...

The next day, we all went to Toybox, a huge daytime after-after-party lasting from 01.00pm to 08.00pm in Sydney's Luna Park. Toybox is a very exclusive party and tickets are hard to come by. Luckily, Marco was really sharp and managed to acquire tickets for the four of us. Toybox is also a very gay party. To give you an idea: imagine 3000 men (and just 150 girls), most of them bare-chested and super-muscular (not the girls of course), in a big dark arena, dancing really closely together, most of them on drugs, rubbing their sweaty bodies against each other in excruciating heat with a mind-altering lightshow synchronised to a hypnotising trance beat...get the drift? Obviously, Mischa was thrilled by all the good looking men around her ;-)) (but only had eyes for one man!!) and Thomas...well he felt better at ease than he had thought beforehand and not so neutral witnesses confirm that he was spotted with his shirt off at a certain point (!!!??). Actually to be honest we both had a great, unforgettable and exhilarating time and Nik and Marco: we sure are looking forward to go to the next Rapido with you guys!!

The next day it was time to move on. In our horrendously ugly Red Holden station-wagon we made our way to the famous Blue Mountains. We booked two rooms in a super cosy little hostel called Kurrura Guest House (www.bluemts.com.au/kurrara), which had already been in operation since 1905 (!!!). Obviously anxious to see all the highlights of the region, we quickly checked in at the guesthouse and hopped back into the car, off to view the famous Edge Point. This is the big ticket drawcard of Katoomba, where a series of allegedly sensational viewing platforms are supposed to transport your gaze over Jamison Valley and more importantly the alleged impressive Three Sisters rock formation which towers over the scene (freely plagiarised from the Lonely Planet). That was the theory. In practice, it is here that we were struck by the sobering realisation that our journey through South America has truly spoiled us. Although Edge point is beautiful by any standard, with the risk of sounding blaze we must admit that we just were not that impressed. In the South American Andes and Patagonia, beautiful views are the norm. They are everywhere, you wake up with beautiful views and you go to bed with beautiful views...in between you have lunch with beautiful views...and while savouring these beautiful views, you are often all by yourself without a human presence for miles and miles and miles...Now in Australia, they build special platform (and of course a Visitors Centre) for the one beautiful view in an area, which on top of that attracts bus-loads of daytrip tourists from all over the world ...it just felt very organised and touristy and we really miss the ruggedness and the simplicity of South America. This is probably when we decided to want to skip Ayers Rock, the famous but oh so touristy rock formation in the middle of nowhere...we don't want to risk being disappointed once again.

However, if you can't beat them...join them!! So we quickly set all our snobbish objections aside and bought 4 tickets for the most touristy attraction in the region: Scenic World (www.scenicworld.com.au), where we did everything from Scenic Skyway to Scenic Cableway to Scenic Railway to Scenic Walkway (we are not inventing these names, check the site). And oh did we have fun!!! As the pictures demonstrate...

That night, we had dinner in the Rooster Restaurant (www.jamisonhouse.com), which boasts to be the best French and European Restaurant in the Blue Mountains. Well actually, it is the ONLY French and European restaurant in the Blue Mountains...;-)) Anyway, they were just shooting a film to be used in a promotion for the Blue Mountains region and asked us whether we had a problem with appearing in the film. Of course we answered in choir: 'of course not!!!' and ended up having lots of trouble maintaining our composure or in fact behaving like grown ups altogether the next 2 hours, joking like teenagers and laughing out loud and with lots of exaggeration (including the mad scientist laughs of course) whenever the camera would zoom in towards us. They must have hated us and we hope that they still were able to make a good film... hi, hi!

The next day, the weather sucked. A mist had settled down in Katoomba so there was really nothing else to do than to hang in the TV room of the guesthouse, read trashy magazines and watch classic films (Et Dieu Crea la Femme and The Witches of Eastwick). Diner at Avalon (www.avalonkatoomba.com) was a great way to top off the day and the owner/waitress possessed a natural ability to make us feel happy and at home. We will never forget her Liquorice Cheesecake and are currently working on a business plan to franchise it in Europe.

We drove back to Sydney the next morning feeling quite melancholic. Our Journey with Marco and Nik had come to an end. We travelled three harmonious weeks together and we will always cherish the fond memories and miss the fun and the laughter. Marco and Nik: thanks for a wonderful time!!!

The last three days in Sydney were spend updating our blog, posting lots of new stories and pictures, as you may well have noticed. More importantly, we have been updating our CV's and have actively started looking for jobs...Yes, life goes on... and it will be a wonderful challenge now that The Second Great Depression has finally begun...;-)

Given that a storm ravaged Australia's East coast at the end of March and an oil-spill has hit some of the most famous beaches, we decided to fly to Perth and visit some of the worthwhile beaches on the West Coast and to learn to surf! Of course, we will also travel to Coral Bay to dive on Ningaloo Reef.

Lots of love & see ya later,

Thomas and Mischa