First I want to tell you how Brisbane was like…a lovely city approximately the size of Vienna.
We stayed with Sarah and her cool housemates in a cute little house in the center of Brisbane. We had a great time together cooking dishes (we served “Krautfleckerl” again), telling funny stories while having a glass of wine or two or just listening to her playing the piano. She is a great person with lots of interesting hobbies such as making her own jewelry and obviously many friends as almost every day new people popped up for a coffee, a tea or just to say hello.
The city has a remarkable skyline and a climate that comes close to Miami. This makes the public lagoon at South Bank in front of the CBD skyline a famous place for gatherings or simply an oasis of peace to relax and forget about work for a moment.
We were lucky because during our stay the Buddha Birth festival took place at the lagoon which is the largest of its kind in the world. There I relaxed with my café latte and watched the dragons dancing and afterwards I had a shoulder and back massage…very nice.
The night life in Brisbane is restricted to a small area called “The Valley”. I heard that club “Family” is the most famous one, so we went there on a Friday night. Cool club with 2 big floors, good drinks and a freaky ambient but not quite enough people – a general problem of the Aussies and the Kiwis.
On our last evening we had a girly night with one guy (Mike of course). The girls became jealous not to have such a trendy beard like Mike’s and decided to find out, how they would look like when having a beard – with interesting results including a Salvador Dali lookalike ;)
Our next goal was to go all the way up to Airlie Beach to see the Whitsunday Islands, which is the backpacker beach paradise of Australia. Meanwhile, we were so curious to see more wildlife that we visited the Australian Zoo, the last home of the “crocodile hunter” (Steve Irwin). So far we haven’t seen too much wildlife to be honest…no kangaroo, no koala bear, no drop bear ;), no lizards, etc. There finally we saw koalas, kangaroos and other funny creatures of Australia; have a look: aren’t they cute?
Koalas; very fluffy little bears with a sleeping problem ;)
A cassowary – something like a colored ostrich
An echidna – something like a hedgehog with a long nose…
…and finally: the animals we do not have in Austria. Although they would perfectly fit on the “Donauinsel” – laziness at its best and only moving when the food cart comes around ;)
One animal which fascinated us most was the Tasman devil. It coughs as if it has smoked a pack of cigarettes and just runs in circles like Dagobert Duck – if you ever wanted to know why they are endangered, have a look at this video...
From there, it took us three days to reach Airlie Beach (appr. 1100 km). We booked a beach view hostel near the lagoon, which is like in Brisbane a free giant pool. U have to know that the Aussies rather go into pools than in the sea because there they do not need a stinger suit to protect them against dangerous little jellyfishes which r just as big as a finger tip but can kill you!!!
However, the lagoon is amazing: hot weather, cool wohda (as the Aussies say water) and palm trees full of cockatoo’s eating coconuts.
After one day relaxing at the lagoon we booked a speedboat tour to the Whitsunday Islands.
After some snorkeling (fully protected of course) we headed towards Whitehaven Beach, among the top ten beaches in the world. After a short bush walk where Jiny “found” our first snake in the wild, we came to the lookout point over viewing the hill inlet…and spotting our speedboat waiting for us.
Best place to…do a photo shoot of course!
After re-entering the speedboat we drove along the Whitehaven Beach, which is 7 miles long, finally stopping at its northern end, where we had a lunch buffet at the beach. I think these pictures don’t need any comments, or?
After having lunch I assumed having a romantic afternoon with Mike in paradise but again something appeared to be way more interesting than me. After spotting a goanna or monitor lizard, Mike disappeared in the bush for hours – and actually it was my fault as I pointed its appearance out to him…hmmpfrr. Mike and his animals – I should have known it…
The next day we had to get up really early as we had booked a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. The ferry left around 8 am and it took us 3 hours to get to the Hardy reef. Although the weather forecast was good, the weather wasn’t. Already while boarding the crew strongly recommended taking some medicine against travel sickness and although most people did, the ride ended up in a real mess. The strong wind caused the highest waves (4-5m) I have ever seen (and felt), which were quite high for a boat of around 25m. It was almost impossible to get off the seat and if we ended up flying all over the boat – seriously. One can assume that this was way too much for most stomachs (me and Mike were fine) and hence…what a mess. No further comments on that…
Finally we arrived at the reef where the water was calm and immediately jumped into the gear to get ready to see some fishys – sexy, hah?
After jumping into the water I was suddenly surrounded by an explosion of colorful fishys – what a cool experience.
Then we spotted a bigger one and tried to hunt it – here u can see a video of our (not unexpectedly unsuccessful) hunt ;)
The reef is not only the home of millions of fishys but also of mussels in all colors…
…and sizes! This one was about 2m wide and that was the closest I dared myself to go as you really don’t want to end up having one leg in it when it’s closed – creepy!!!
Also very fascinating were all the different corals there…especially the so called brain corals (see below)
Just when we were staring at the corals we saw something big swimming towards us…fortunately it wasn’t a shark…it was a huge but very cute sea turtle – we even touched it…so cool!
We also caught our turtle experience on video – have a look:
This was literally one of our journey highlights…highly recommendable.
After that we relaxed another day on Airlie Beach before we started driving back to Brisbane, where we will continue our journey towards Singapore.
Stay tuned for our next blog entry from Southeast Asia.
Blubb
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