we’re almost there

road into the mountains

well, we are in airlie beach, aka the area of whitsundays islands. can’t wait for our trip tomorrow, everything looks gorgeous.

we have safely made our way up the coast, with a large haul over 600~ kms from rockhampton to airlie beach yesterday. today, we’re just chilling in airlie – found wireless internet and so i bring you lots-a-photos!
sydney to brisbane (KOALA HOLDING IS HERE)
brisbane to fraser
fraser to day before yesterday (eurimbola national park or something like that)

australia is definitely looking more australian – we still haven’t seen any “real” big kangoroos, although hope is not yet lost. lots of wallabies by this point, which is really nice. on the drive to bunya mountains (it was on the drive that the above photograph was taken), we saw wallabies crossing the road, and when we woke up there was one right outside our door, munching on grass. snapshots are available on the first link.

queensland is supposedly famous for the red sand, which is also getting more common. i even got to hold a koala at this point! (as you might have read).

we tanned, i swam (in a lake, swimming in the ocean is too dangerous, there are small nuances like sharks and killer tides), and tomorrow more swimming shall be done at the reef!

highlights of the trip so far are:

  • our incredible obsession with beef jerky
  • an enroumous choice of amazing wines that all cost less than $9CAD
  • hangovers after consuming those enourmous choices ;)
  • wallabie roadkill. so weird!
  • our campervan is kick ass. we can live off the grid for 2 days, providing an external water supply for washing dishes.
  • on a particularly bumpy road, after wishing to take photographs of the passing views, my microdrive burping and deciding all my photos (400 images .. fraser island, and the park where we just spent 2 days) are not there anymore. thankfully, it was all restored by tim and checkdisk. why did i not copy, you ask? because my laptop battery without electricity only lasts ~30 minutes, and it takes about 30 minutes to copy a full card. we get electricity when we stay at campervan parks, so i do my copying, editing and charging up there. i also could charge on the road from the adaptor, but i usually only copy music to and from my mp3 player on the road.
  • we both got hooked on rumpole series. fun, awesome writing, very funny, and we managed to score all the books but one from another 2nd hand book shop for $5 plus exchange of our silly, have read, cheapass books. we saved like $12 there. the math is a bit fuzzy, but basically, we have a tonn of good read, (and even mediocre reading, i bought some junk reading ala king + grisham only scifi-ish, don’t remember the name), for cheap, or even profitable, and we are both getting a kick reading in the morning, evenings, beach, tanning, etc.
  • my mp3 player + tape deck adaptor + laptop every 3 hours to supply more music == fresh music so far! i’m afraid we’re starting to push the limits of my music collection though. i don’t think tim is a big fan of russian pop dance, which i ashamedly posses in large quantities, or the instrumental collections i got off my mom’s disks.
  • switching to rising at like 8-9am naturally after having spent 3 days in fraser rising at 6am daily
  • now, fraser is a seperate story. we have shared a 4×4 car with 9 other people, and spent 2 nights and 1 whole day (and half another day in start and half another day in the end) on this huge beach dune which has awesome fresh water lakes (freezing, but gorgeous), and generally a very awesome natural landscape. the downside of it being a sanddune and sharing one car with 11 people is that SAND. GETS. EVERYWHERE. those of you who know how picky i am about my camera’s cleanliness, will know that traces of sand inside my LENSCAP mean it literally was everywhere. i didn’t even switch lenses (shot sigma12-24 and mini canon) the entire time.
    on that note i should have more photos off the canon tomorrow.
    we have bought food together, bought meat from the butcher offered by the place (koala adventures), and bought cheap liquer. oh. my. god. we have not eaten worse meat and drank worse alcohol in AGES. it was so disgusting! and it was such a joy to get back to normal, great-wine, great-food, no-sand world afterwards! but even despite that, fraser was pretty fun. pretty, at least :D

    Hi mom!

    hi mom!

    Fraser island Reflections of sunrise Rain and sunrise tim against the sunrise
    tree outlines

    5 thoughts on “we’re almost there”

    1. wow what a great update! it was worth the wait. :) and i love the pics. i need to go to australia, just to hold a koala :D

    2. It is UNACCEPTABLE to have just 3 pictures of the van. And one of them from that crappy angle and with the front cropped off. Anyone who goes on road trips knows to take at least 5 (good) pictures of the vehicle thats getting you from place to place!

      Other than that…..good update. That is a kick ass graphic of the rodent (kinda looks like a squirrel, save for that tail) bitchsmacking the kid!

      Didnt the koalas scratch? They have kickass claws. Maybe those were sissy ones that didnt move much for tourists =P

    3. yaay
      such an awesome balance between cute, adorable, educational and amazingly amazingly pretty. Pity you didn’t enjoy Fraser to its full potential though :(

      oh and weren’t you told not to ever call coalas bears becaue they are not and it makes their takecarers angry? :)

      I miss you! and you’re such an awesome awesome girl for posting all this.

    4. wee, photos

      koalas look cool

      as diny mentioned, i expect a full spec sheet of the van, complete with dimensions of all possible bolts and an exact schematic of the suspension design accurate to within 0.4mm.

      and me and maha were obssessed with beef jerky way before you guys! for serious.

    5. i was holding my breath while looking at those awesome sunset/sunrise/beach pictures

      and to think i could’ve been living in australia for over 10 years now!
      but i guess i wouldnt have appreciated the beauty of it as much :)

      this is just so awesome!

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