Australia - East Coast Sidney to Brisbane
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2003
1
9
10
Trip End
Nov 21, 2003
Sidney, Australia,
Australia
Friday, October 10, 2003
Australia is huge. Absolutely humungous. Only has 16 million inhabitants, mainly concentrated in the capital cities around the coast. The inland is hardly settled at all, all barren and red like on TV and mostly populated by poor aboriginals with a simple lifestyle that you will hardly find on the coast and only in city subburbs. The aboriginals are by some deemed to be the oldest civilisation ion the face of the Earth and have a very secretive spiritual belief that is only revealed in its larger extent by the elders to the initiated males. Women have their own stories and sacred sites that are no-go to the males. It's very complicated, and due to the secretive nature of it all the whites hardly know anything about the aborigines and there are quite strong antipathies and prejudices against them. I can see where they are coming from. I'm in Alice Springs right now and there are lots of alcoholised unkempt aborigines on the streets, some begging for cigarettes, etc. It's not a nice sight and not safe either. I do not have enough insight into their culture to allow myself an opinion, but it's not hard to tell that the aborigines are clearly underprivileged. An indicator of this are the aboriginal integration laws that were only passed in the mid 80's (!). Aboriginals during settlement and creation of large ranches and farmland have been stuck into reserves similar to the American Indians. This and all the modern technology and western lifestyle must still be a cultural shock to a people that until recently led a nomadic life in a more or less prehistoric society. Many traditional Aborigines still prefer to sleep outdoors and refuse a roof over their head. A comparison to the Maori of New Zealand shows that the latter have not been treated quite as badly on the whole and are better integrated into society. Also it's easier for me to understand where the Maori are coming from as they proudly display and share their culture and history. The Maori are united by one general language whereas the aborigines speak myriads of different languages that can differ strongly between neighbouring tribes and can be as unrelated as Chinese and Greek. It's a difficult situation here racially and problems are far from resolved.
Now for the trip:
Landed in Sidney, stayed at YHA with initial plan to look for someone to give me a ride up north, sadly unsuccessfully, but before considering further travels I completely enjoyed my stay here. People say you either like Sidney or Melbourne. Can't comment on that yet as I've only been to Sidney so far, but Sidney definitely rocks. Went on a free tour of the city and then travelled around with Mike whom I met in the hostel. We toured the opera house and went to the zoo which is really quite nice, saw our first Australian Animals: Koala's (sweeeeet!), kangaroos, wallabies, echidnas, dingos, birds, etc. The Opera house and harbour bridge are a beautiful backdrop to any picture and I had the privilege of seeing one of the nice harbourside suburbs on the North Shore when visiting Nadine, a friend from Munich I met in Invercargill who is doing a 2 month medical elective with a friend of hers, Sigrid, in Sidney and lives with a marvelous aussi couple. It was also great finally catching up with Chriss Gowers who's been working near Sidney for 7 months now and gossiping about the old Exeter lot. He's the first one that noticed my crazy change in accents after Edinburgh. I think I'll have to go back to the US for accent purification...
Also went to the Livid festival in Sidney. It was great to rock out big time again. Highlights were the incredible White Stripes, Pacifier, the Hellacopters, SPOD, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and my beloved Turbonegro who splattered me with a bucketload of blood. Thanks Boys!
Then went to the Blue Mountains and stayed in Katoomba. The blue mountains outside of Sidney got their name from the blue shimmer that hangs over them which is due to evaporation of a bluish vapor from the eucaypt trees. There are glorious canyons here with remarkable rock formations like the Three Sisters and stunning waterfalls like the "Wentworth Falls", to me the most beautiful ones I've seen in Australia or New Zealand.
Altogether this feeling of need to compare the two always comes up. "What's better, OZ or NZ?" I try to suppress this question and refuse to answer it now as it's unfair to compare 7 months in a country I've travelled in most of it's extent with 5 weeks in a country that I've only seen specs of. I'd definitely recommend NZ if you've only got, say, 4-8 weeks. If you've got more time you'll be able to appreciate more of Australia's vast countryside. I've got 5 weeks in total here and can only travel to very select destinations and have to organise myself in a militarily precise manner to cover the enormous distances this country slightly bigger than the US or Europe has to span the entire east coast between Sidney and Cairns, the Outback around Alice Springs, down to Adelaide and Melbourne.
Back to the Blue Mountains: Animal and bird life are abundant here with many varieties of parrots the most colourful, wild indigenous turkeys, many varieties of songbirds and pigeons, wallabies and lizards amongst the many things you stumble upon when hiking here.
Here you can also visit the splendid Jenolan caves: a system of limestone caves with incredible formations open to the public for over 100 years in parts and iluminated by an intricate lighting system. Sadly tourism to these splendid caves comes at a price. Large areas of the caves have been covered in concrete paths and caged in to guide large amounts of visitors past. Dynamite and the intalation of lighting have done their parts in destroying some of the most priceless areas and habitats in the caves. If you manage to disregard the impact of the "improved" infrastructure you'll find the caves are absolutely stunning, with every type of formation you can imagine in abundance: veils, stalagtites, stalagmites, helictites (what??), mighty columns, flowstones... and the lighting does add a nice effect to some of the formations. Some of the caves have amazing acoustic properties and international stars and choirs have performed here before pretty sizeable audiences.
One of the perks of travelling at the moment is the rugby world cup, by the way. It's great popping into a pub or a backpacker cafe to see the international audience cheering their team along. I personally count my All Blacks Jersey as one of my most prized and worn posessions. Go the All Blacks!!!
Next stop was lovely Belingen, a laid back alternative town with lots of art and hippies. The YHA there was great and I met a bunch of lovely people there: Karen, Olav and Dagmar, for example. They have a colony of flying foxes (mega huge bats) in the centre of town that go their eerie ways at dusk. BBBBatman! Greg took us on a tour of the Dorigo national park and we were lucky to see an enormous array of bird, mamal and lizard life. Still no lethal animals, though... Austalia is known to have a magnitude of potentially deadly animals, and before I came here people made it sound as if I wouldn't be able to take a single step without being the unsuspecting prey of some carnal danger. 7 of the 10 most dangerous animals in the world live here. Wow. Sharks and killer Jellyfisch and Sea Snakes off the coast, Saltwater Crocodiles in the northern rivers, deadly spiders everywhere, even in the cities, the most deadly snake in the world and several of its equally lethal slithering chums, rabid dingoes, scorpions, ticks, mossies; even that cute little platypus is venomous! I am bored by sweet little animals. I want to see something toxic, sharp toothed and threatening...
Next stop Byron Bay. There's a nice, if busy, alternative hostel there, the Arts Factory. You can build your own Didjeridoo, etc. Great swimming and beach walking. Nice views off the coast. We saw some humpback whales swimming past and generally had a very nice day with Karen, Olav and Fabienne bevor I had to hasten on to Brisbane. Schedule, schedule, schedule... Bit of a shame, really. My day in Brisbane was nice. Sadly missed Trina there, but went on a little stroll through town on a lovely day. Enjoyed the fantastic museum and the athmosphere on the South Bank and the tranquility of the botanical gardens. Saw Kill Bill 1. Yeah, gorey Yakuza-Western-Comic-Jap-Surfrock Masterpiece of Quentin Tarantino's. Definite must-see if you don't mind a bit of disembowelment on screen.
The next installment leads onwards and upwards, then inwards to the red core of the world's most ancient continent (possibly...)!
