Plan B

We've settled in an appartment in St Kilda, a suburb around Melbourne near the beach. We'll be staying there untill the 2nd of january. After that it's fruitpicking time :)

We looked around in Melbourne for a job, but it quickly became very clear that finding 3 jobs (one for Evy, one for Siegfried and one for yours truly) around the hollidayseason on short notice wasn't going to be as easy as we'd hoped. Yesterday the three of us decided that it would be better to start looking for a job in fruitpicking. Now it's one day later and we've found a place in Mildura where we can start working from the 4th of january on. It's actually a hostell that also works a bit like a jobagency. They have contacts with all the farmers in the area and send out workwilling (and we are VERY workwilling... or broke... depends how you look at it) backpackers where they are needed. They even have a website: www.borderlinebackpackers.com (waaaaw). There's plenty of harvestingwork in Victoria (the state where Melbourne and Mildura are located) from january to may, so work in that area is guaranteed. It's gonna be hard though... It gets up to 40 degrees and over there at this time of the year, and the work itself is said to be hard. We'll see how it goes.

So we'll be staying in Melbourne for the newyear. That should be great. There's plenty of bars on the southbank, and the city will be glowing with fireworks on newyears eve. Next week we're going to take a 3-day tour that will take us along the famous ocean highway (http://www.greatoceanrd.org.au) on the eascoast of Australia, and to the Grampians national park (www.visitgrampians.com.au). Really looking forward to that. After that it's up to Mildura and time for some hard work to get our bankballance back up. We'll probably work for about a month. After that we should have enough cash to (finally!!!) travel to and around Tasmania. I'm really looking forward to the overland track (www.overlandtrack.com.au), a long walkingroute that takes you through the centre of Tasmania. It starts out on an alpine section, and then gradually takes you down through Tasmania's rainforests. After Tasmania we'll probably head up to Adelaide and do some more fruitpickingwork there, before we start our trip through the centre of Australia, all the way up to Darwin in the northern tip of Australia.

looking for shared flat and a job in Melbourne

In the last few days we've decided to start looking for a shared flat or something similar in Melbourne. Once we've found a place (on weekly basis, that gives us the most flexibility), we'll be looking for a job in Melbourne. So if anyone knows anyone who knows someone in Melbourne who can get us a wellpaid job... let us know :)

We spent today looking for some sort of shared accomodation. Didn't really find anything yet, but it's early days. We got some good tips though, and we're checking out a local bookshop in the neighbourhood tomorrow that's supposed to have a big noticeboard with loads of adds for shared accomodation and flats. So hopefully there's something hanging out there that looks good.

Looking for a decent job will be quite a challenge too. I'm gonna start high up the ladder looking for some basic officework or something... and if that doesn't work out i'll give hospitalitywork or some sort of tele-/direct marketingjob a try, or start looking for a dogkennel in the suburbs :) hmmm, that's probably not even a bad idea... I'll keep my eyes open for that, got plenty of experience there :) And if things don't work out at all in Melbourne, it's up to the outback and picking fruit in the Ozzie heat. I've heard that fruitpicking is hard work but can earn you loads of money in a short time if you work long hours (up to 12 per day, 7 days per week). So maybe it's well worth working like mad for a month and making enough money in that time to last another three.

Up to now travelling here has been great. I've seen beautifull places and things in the short time i've been here, and talked to some interesting people (and a bit mad too... for example: some guy in Bondi told me he was going to be as famous as Jesus... for what, i couldn't really figure out... but by the looks of him and his talk i'd think he's starting his own sekt/religion thing... At least i've got a photo of him and me, so if he does turn out to be the new Jesus i've got something to boast about... but somehow i doubt it...). Australians, or at least the one's we've talked to, are very friendly. Most of the busdrivers here, for example, are the opposite of the type you're likely to run into in Belgium: extremely friendly and always looking for a chat. They even go off of their normal routes to drop you of somewhere if you ask them nicely... It's almost like a taxi... but then better: bigger, cheaper and more legspace :)

We've bumped into a lot of Europeans here too. The majority of them seem to be Brits (not really much of a surpise here now is there...), but Holland, Germany and Scandinavian countries are also well represented. The amount of Belgians on the other hand is negligible (is that correct spelling mum?). I can literaly count them on one hand: FOUR... and that's counting two frenchspeaking Belgians... so I'm not even sure if that really counts... ... .... just kidding...

Our trip has also been a little frustrating though. Fear of running out of cash too fast has made us think twice about doing some worthwile trips (The Great Ocean Road, The Snowy Mountains, some national parks, ...) and activities. But that will be less of an issue once we start making some cash here. The past weeks will no doubt have been the most expensive of our trip, so once we refill our bankaccounts we should be fine and get a chance to see and do much more.

In Melbourne

Hello.

It's been some time since my last update, so here's one fresh from Oz.

We arrived in Melbourne yesterdaynight (11/12) after a trip of about ten days that took us from Canberra, via Wagga Wagga (aka Wogga, aka "place of many crows" in aboriginal tongue) and Alburry, to Melbourne. The busride from Canberra to Melbourne would of taken us more than 10 hours, so we decided to make the trip more enjoyable by taking some extra stops on the way.

We spent a few days on a campingsite in Wagga Wagga (which literaly translated means "crow crow"). The campingsite was right next to "Wogga Beach", a mini beach along the Murrumbidgee River. The atmosphere was nice and relaxed and the town itself was ok (nothing special, the largest inland city in Australia but not a lot to see or do). On our second night we got woken up by nightly visitors... A small local family of possums had discovered a loaf of bread that we had left in the vestibule area (the outertentpart where you can store bagage and other stuff... including food... NOT a good idea...). They managed to dig into 4 loafs of bread before we got our bread to safety in our innertent. Another lesson well learnt :) The nights after that the possums mostly left us alone, not counting the evening two of them visited us during our barbeque begging for food. Curious creatures... They just showed up attracted by the smell of food and didn't seem to take too much notice of us... We couldn't work out whether they were partially blind or just couldn't give a toss about us trying to drive them away by making noise and gestures. Even when Evy actually gave them a piece of bread out of her hand, they just took it and ignored her and us for the rest... That showed us what our place was.

After Wogga we left for Alburry in the hope we could rent a car there to drive to the Snowy Mountains and Mt Kosciuszko (highest peak in Australia). That didn't work out though, so our plan to see the Snowy Mountains has been put on hold for the moment. Alburry was a bit like Wogga, but then greener and without the possums. There was a small pool on the campingground, which came in handy 'cause the weather's been hot and sunny the last few weeks. We stayed in Alburry for 3 days and then left to Melbourne... First impression is it's a city full of life, night and day. Lot of stuff going on and plenty of things to do. We'll be here for atleast a week. After that we're not sure yet what we'll do. We're considering doing some work first, before we leave for Tasmania... We'll see how things go.

In short not a lot happened recently... Saw a lot of urban and suburban australia... enough to last us the next 8 months. Hopefully we can get to see some more of Australia's national parks in the near future, that's where Australia's true beauty lies... and for the moment we're seeing too little of it. But i'm sure that will change in the near future.

I'm afraid that's it for now... internetcafe is closing... but i'll try and get another post online tomorrow or the day after with a bit more info.

O yeah, our tent is fixed and almost as good as new again after working on it today :)

Hit by minitornado...

Yep, we seem to be running into some bad luck... Yesterday Canberra got hit by some really bad weather which resulted in a "mini-tornado". Our campsite got hit quite badly yesterday late afternoon (while we were away of our campsite), derooting some trees and snapping off a lot of small and bigger branches. Good news is that our tent did not get hit by any debree. Bad news is that the strong wind dug into our tent and seriously bent the tentpoles. We had to hold the tenstructure up with some plastic strips. Some of our stuff got wet too... Rang the shop where we bought our tent today, and they will send us a new set of poles (free of charge) next week. So i guess we didn't get off that bad.

Gotta go, getting kicked out of the library (closing time) where i'm using the internet :)