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.