Australia going south; Sydney - Adeleide

After we arrived in Sydney our first goal was to find a car which will take us around Australia for the next 2 months. We finally decided to rent a Jucy-camper van for four persons. It came with a small kitchen (fridge included) and a TV. But the best thing is the "penthouse". A cosy little bed on the top of the roof, too small for two persons, except they really really like each other... :-)
Well, of course I love my brothers and my father, so it was no problem for us at all to share
the bed! ;-)

Once we had a car we spent one more rainy day in Sydney and visited the "classics" like Harbour bridge and Opera house and walked through "The Rocks", a part of Sydney next to the harbour, where you can still see the old colonial buildings.

On the next morning we visited Bondi-beach. One of Sydney's most famous beaches for surfing and sun-bathing. Right after that we got to our van and left the city to start our journey through Australia...

The first part of our journey took us down the south-coast, then west to finally reach Adeleide, where we picked up our brother Oliver to make the "quartet of chaos" complete.
Some short stories should talk about our adventures in Down-Under till we picked up Ötschi:

 
Surfers and lonely beaches:
On the first days down the coast south of Sydney we passed by lots of lonely sandy beaches (We just had to share them with Kangaroos sometimes...). Ideal for swimming if the ocean wouldn't be that cold. Simon and me still went for a short swim or at least washed our hairs in the mighty waves crashing on the shore. Every now and then we saw a few surfers in Neoprene riding their big waves. Was nice to just stop and stare for a while at them...

Canberra:  
Spent one day in Australia's capital, Canberra. A nice city with lots of green parks, located in between Sydney and Melbourne and about 150km away from the ocean. Therefore the city is next to the artificially dammed lake Burley Griffin. Australia created the lake to give the citizen still the feeling to be next to the water/ocean.
We hiked along the lake front for a little while and visited the impressive Parliament house. On its rooftop we had a nice view of Canberra. But the combination  of modern architecture (with the 81m high flagmast) and alignment (facing exactly Mt. Ainslie) of the building is what it make it so unique.
The funniest thing we did in Canberra was walking through the part of the city, where the embassies of the different countries are located. Trying to guess, by just looking on the architecture of the building, which country it is representing... :-)
At sun set we drove to Mount Ainslie where we had one last nice view of Australia's capital city.

Wilsons Promontory National Park:

We further drove down the road along the coast until we reached Wilsons Promontory National Park.
There we spent 2 days and did some hiking along the coast and up to Mt Bishop. The camp side we shared with lots of Wombats. These "over dimensional hamsters" were eating grass there and are totally used to humans. But you are not allowed to feed this wild animals because they may get sick and aggressive then.
Even our breakfast we had to share with lots of parrots. Those small birds were not shy at all and even landed on your shoulders, arms and also on our heads. Than they stared at you as if to say, "Let's share your breakfast buddy!!" :-)

   
Melbourne:
After the National Park we made our way to Melbourne.
We had to change the van as our hand break broke down.
Spent one day exploring the city and went to the Shrine of Remembrance. These building is an exact copy of the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos (one of the seven world wonders of the antiquity) and should remember to all fallen soldiers in the different wars Australia was in.
We made a quick stop at the Federation square,famous for the modern architecture buildings surrounding the square. Looked really weird!

Great Ocean Road:
The highlight on the south coast of Australia was definitely the 243km long Great Ocean Road.
Running along the south coast of "Oz" (used as short form for Australia: "Oz"-tralia) this road has some really nice spots with stunning views of the rocky wild coast. There several meter high waves break and crush on the steep cliffs generating sound like thunder.
Along this road are several world famous surf-spots and only the bravest surfers are crazy enough to ride this waves! .
Every year there is the surf world cup in Torquay, the "capital of surfing" in Australia.
We visited the Surf world museum there, which proudly presents the long history of surfing in Oz.
In this part of Australia Surfing really means everything. Everybody has his own board being every free minute in the water and waiting for the perfect wave to surf...

On the Great Ocean Road are also the famous 12 apostles. The apostles are 20 to 50m high sandstone rock formations in the ocean. Once part of the high cliffs a few meters next to them, they are now towering above in the ocean and big waves crush against this titans. Until at some point the construction will get so weak that the stone towers collapse. It already happened to some rock-formations like the "London bridge" in 1990.
At Lochard Gorge you can even go down to the shore and get very close to the amazing rock formations. Simply impressive landscape you should not miss on an Australia-trip!!

Adeleide:
After 2 weeks driving through 3 states of Australia and more than 2000km we finally reached the capital of South Australia, Adeleide.
There we picked up our brother Oliver from the airport, who will join us for the rest of our trip through Australia.

One day of visiting Adeleide was fine for us before we started heading off north to Darwin through the "Outback" of Australia also know as the "Never Never" (or where the dingo kisses the kangaroo good night... :-) ).