Australia, May 2000

In May and June of 2000, Marcel and I finally made the big trip we had been talking about for a long time: a four-week holiday trip in Australia.

For me the trip started with a week of conference in Gold Coast, Australia. Not a bad place to have the GPR 2000 conference, a biannual meeting where I presented part of my dissertation. I also met up with some old Dutch friends and spent a week acclimatizing in a beautiful hotel 200 meters from the beach.

After less than a week I was on my way to Sydney to meet up with Marcel. That is where our great trip started. It was here that we decided to rent a campervan and tour in it along the East coast. It was after a pretty frustrating day of shopping for rental cars that Marcel just happened to be the right person at the right time as he just walked into a campervan rental place that was looking desperately for somebody to drive a campervan to Darwin. That was exactly what we needed and we had found a home for the next four weeks. The van turned out to be excellent: drive into a town, park the van in front of the bar, go out and crawl back into your home. The next morning, wake up and make breakfast, coffee, tostis etc.

But before we hit the road we spent a good weekend in Sydney, a place where you can party till the early hours and O'Mullays is an excellent starting bar. Of course we took pictures of the Opera House, went to a Rugby League game in the Olympic stadium, and drove along the beautiful cliffs and beaches.

Sydney harbor, view from bridge.

Sydney harbor, view of bridge.

Olympic stadium, Australian Rugby League, Roosters vs. Bulldogs.

Sydney skyline.

Next stop was Blue Mountains, a nice national park land inward with great views. However, it was freezing at night, which we did not really expect on our holidays so it was time to head up north to some sun, not knowing we wouldn't really see hot summer sun until Darwin.

Blue mountains amusement park.

Quite some steps down.

On our way up along the coast we visited all the main tourist attractions. As a tourist in Australia you travel from town to town, where you will find organized hiking, scuba diving, site seeing, skydiving and whatever you want trips for 1,2, or more days. As a good tourist we stopped at Fraser Island for a one day trip to the island, Whitsunday Islands for a three day sailing trip, and Cairns for a three day scuba/snorkeling trip to Cape Tribulation.

Fraser Island is the world's largest sand bar covered with some tropical rain forest and populated by the world's deadliest spiders (don't stick your finger in any hole in Australia, you never know what has been in there before). The Whitsunday islands must be beautiful when the sun is shining. If it is raining two of the three days of your sailing trip, it is not that exciting, except for funny Reigers. Cape Tribulation was the high light of the whole trip, definitely spend a couple of night at party center PK's (however do not stay too long it is Ground Hog Day before you know it).

Fraser island, world's largest sandbar.

Fraser island, sunken boat.

Marcel and I surfing the waves.

Cape Tribulation, the ultimate relaxation resort.

Rain forest meets great barrier reef.

Jokers.

After all these days of beach, beautiful green nature and two weeks of none stop drinking, it was time to hit the Outback. However, before that we visited our old friends Bas and Kirstin from Delft and London, who are working in Townsville right now. It was great to see them again and we had an excellent time visiting Magnetic Island, where we finally saw the first living kangaroos and koalas.

Bas van Dorp, we don't take prisoners, we shoot them.

Toys to race on magnetic island.

Me and kangaroos: check.

Me and koala: check.

More koala.

Now turn off your brain, put your foot on the pedal, but don't forget to stop at every single gas station you run into: time to hit the outback. Did I already tell you Australia was a little bigger than expected when planning our trip back home ?? At this point we had already driven 3000 km and we had another 3500 to go. We had a goal though: Darwin. So two and a half day driving later, where we didn't see a lot more than roads trains, beautiful sunsets, termite mounts and a lot of nothing, we finally were closing in on Darwin (this is only halfway the country by the way). Time for more site seeing in Katherine's Gorge and Kakadu National Park. As good ex-mining students of course we found some time to visit the uranium mine in the middle of the national park.

The "highway" to Darwin, which we enjoyed two straight days.

Finally a picture of our home for four weeks.

Beautiful sunsets along the way.

Small termite mount, we found out the next day there are mounts twice as high and ten times the diameter.

Crocodile.

Kakadu national park.

Then, there it was, like an oasis in the desert, the end of our journey: Darwin. In Darwin we finished how we started, partied until early in the morning. Unfortunately Darwin is the only place in Australia where you can not spend the night on the parking lot, which we found out the hard way.

Time to call it quits. Australia is a great country, too much for just four weeks, great to travel and seems like great to live, no worries, we'll be back. .

Finally we did it: watched some aboriginal art.

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