Great Ocean Road

Day 275

"May it be you journey on
To light the day
When the night is overcome
You may rise to find the sun"

It's hot in Adelaide...and I love it! +32 today and forecast predicts +34 tomorrow. It's been little while since it has been this hot and I almost forgot how wonderful it is.

Last friday I went to yet another AFL game. This time it was rematch of last years Grand Final between Hawthorn and Geelong. Geelong came to this match as clear favourites since Hawthorn wasn't yet fully recovered from last year's post-season operations. Hehe thats AFL for you, usually half the players of every team have to go under the knife after season because of injuries. AFL is tough game.

Match was lot more exciting than was expected. Hawthorn battled bravely against heavier, faster, more powerful and more experienced Geelong and lost only with 7 points. Hawthorn's performance won me to their side this year...right after West Coast of course.

On Saturday morning I embarked on yet another tour. This one lasting 3 days and taking me to Adelaide through Great Ocean Road and Grampians National Park. I didn't have that big expectations since I had been reading some bad reviews about this tour but I was pleasantly surprised how much there was actually to see, and yet still after 275 days of traveling and seeing the most amazing sights in world, I was still able to be stunned by the beauty of some places.

So first day we traveled along the Great Ocean Road towards world famous 12 Apostels stopping at Koala park to see some Koalas(I wasn't too excited since I had seen many of them in wild already in Magnetic Island back in September). We also stopped on the way to do a treetop walk which basically means a walk on metal platforms which circles 40-50m above ground among treetops...pretty cool but yet again I had done one similar and more impressive one in Pemberton, Western Australia. As Sun was setting we finally got to 12 Apostels and I was literally blown away!

I had seen images before but once there...the whole sight was just breathtaking. No image was able to do justice just how big these "Apostles" actually are and how they dominate entire landscape where we were watching them, beautiful!

Back in our accomodation I had 2 shocks. First was the fact that out of 18 people in tour, I was only one who bought any alcohol from bottleshop next to our hostel. No one else had any alcohol...what the hell?! I obviously mistakenly took the AA-tour. Second shock was how frigging cold it got there during night. Temperature dropped to +2 and we had no heating and only 1 blanket each. I think I got the worst of it since I woke up to heavy cold and flu :-(

Next day we headed back to Apostles to watch sunrise and how different the place looked at morning light.

After that we moved on through the Great Ocean Road to watch it's famous sights such as London Bridge...

...and Bay Of Islands(not quite the same as in NZ)

Finally in after lunch we arrived to Grampians National Parks. Apparently this park suffered minor damage from bushfires and was still mostly closed 2 weeks ago. Luckily it was now open and we were able to do the hikes there. That afternoon we hiked to Pinnacles lookout.

As we got to our accomodation through bottleshop I was certain that I was with AA-members. No one bought any alcohol again! Not like I'm alcoholic or anything, but nothing feels better than 1-2 cold beers after 12h day hiking and sitting in bus. This time we had heaters in our rooms so didn't have to feel so cold again(but the flu was still hanging there).

Next day we did some more hikes again. First one to Balconies lookout...

...and second one to Hollow Mountain which I think was best of the bunch.

Overall, pretty nice tour. Was little disappointed about the group and their AA-mentality. We also had(again) lot of germans and they always just gongregate with themselfs and speak german all time so you never get to know them nor ever able to jump into their conversations. Luckily we had one canadian girl and one dutch girl who didn't speak german so I had atleast some people to chat with.

Adelaide...I'm puzzled about this city. It has about 890,000 residents, but when I go out to downtown there is hardly anyone there! There is explanation though...but I'll save it to next entry which I'm hopefully able to write on Sunday this week. Tomorrow morning it's yet again early wakeup call. At 6:25am bus leaves to Kangaroo Island where I will be spending 2 days. After that it's back to Adelaide, day trip to Barossa and then...heading to familiar state again :-)

PS. Oh, got call from consulate today. My new passport has arrived :-)

A League Of It's Own

Day 270

"When I think back on these times
And the dreams I left behind
I'll be glad 'cause I was blessed to get
To have you in my life"

Packed Melbourne Cricket Ground(MCG) with 90,000 footy fans and 2009 season's opening game where 2 former West Coast Eagles' stars Ben Cousins and Chris Judd collided was yet another dream come true.

When this trip started I had certain specific things I wanted to do. Seeing footy game in legendary MCG was one of them. Yesterday that dream was fulfilled. Footy is just fascinating sport. It is in fact 3rd most attended sport in whole world with average attendance reaching 39,000 each game. I just love footy. It is fast and exciting game. Oh, Carlton demolished Richmond by 83 points. So round 1 went to Judd as Cousins left the field beaten.

Seeing AFL game wasn't the only great thing that happened to me this week, other came completely behind the corner so to speak.

As I was coming back from Sorrento I asked Tessa what there actually is to see in Melbourne and after bashing Melbourne for 30 minutes with comments like: "Melbourne has all the stuff other Australian big cities have...but here it's just shittier version", comment which in my opinion sums up Melbourne quite accurately, Tessa finally remembered a place called Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, 90-minute trip by train from Melbourne. I looked at the place in my Lonely Planet and it was mentioned there very briefly in small sidenote only. Oh well, I trusted local's opinion more than LP's so next morning I woke up at 6:40am and jumped on 8:10am train to Ballarat.

Sovereign Hill was awesome! Let me try to explain it by going back in history, all the way to year 1850. Back in those days it was goldrush era. Gold was very valuable and only way for an ordinary settler to make a fortune. So whenever report came that gold has been found, it generated rush of hundreds of people hoping to get rich. In 1850, they found gold in Ballarat, Victoria. Hundreds, thousands of people came and a town was being built around goldmines.

At 2009 old town of Ballarat is transformed into modern city but few years ago someone had brilliant idea. They went to old library archives, pulled out pictures, drawings and paintings from goldrush era and decided to build an exact replica village to Sovereign Hill near Ballarat. Obviously someone in power also thought it was good idea so they formed Sovereign Hill foundation to help fund this project and making it non-profit organisation. Now, this is where the real genius came in. Instead of having this museum village where people could wander around, they threw group of actors there to portray 1850's lifestyle with authentic costumes, authentic shops, authentic food and authentic street theatre performances! End result is living 1850's city with authentic and realistic life where us(=tourists) can walk in middle and totally immerse ourselfs into life of 1850s goldrush. Just bloody amazing!

To improve immersion, they arrange school camps at Sovereign Hill where school kids and teachers are dressed in periodic costumes and all teaching is done the way it was done back in those days.

In village there was 3 schools where tourists can walk into classroom and observe the teaching as it was done at 1850. Even during classroom breaks children were totally immersed and played only the games children would have played back then. Amazing!

Yea, I took all the pics from Sovereign Hill with Sepia tone to give them proper authenticity. I think they turned out great...just like this shot of a trooper stationed there :-)

All in all, a fantastic hidden gem in Australia that is clearly not known to many people. And that is exactly what I think all travelers are looking for, interesting places which are not yet spoiled by drunken teenage brits who think traveling to Oz is about spending 12 months in Bondi topping mom's and dad's credit card and getting pissed drunk every evening.

What else in Melbourne? I went to Eureka tower one evening as well, luckily it was only evening when sky was clear so managed to get good photo during daylight...

...and during nightlight...

To those who don't know, Eureka is not the tallest building in Souther Hemisphere but it has the highest viewing platform.

Tallest building is the Skytower in Auckland, but that tower has it's viewing platform only about midway through, rest is just one big radio antenna. Hehe, thats Kiwi's for you, typical of them. They are so eager to get any kind of recognition that when they built their Skytower they wanted to make it tallest building in Southern Hemisphere. But instead of doing it the hard way, they just made and average sized tower and placed big ass radio antenna on top of it and woplaa, claimed the title of tallest building. Wuppiee...gg Kiwi's.

Today is friday and I could care less about the F1 circus that is all too visible(and audible) anywhere I go in this city. Roar of the cars in Albert Park is all too audible kilometers away and town is packed with car-humpers. Tonight I'm heading yet again to MCG and this time game is rematch from Grand Final last year, Hawthorn Hawks vs Geelong Pussies...sorry, Cats :-)

Tomorrow I will finally leave Melbourne for good and heading towards Adelaide via Great Ocean Road. What is my opinion of Melbourne? To be honest, I didn't like it nearly as much as I have liked other Australian state capitals, but it's still heaps better then any city in NZ. Many rate Melbourne higher than Sydney but I just don't get it. Sydney is stunningly beautiful and city has so many things to do. I met a finnish couple in hostel about week ago who had spent 2.5 weeks in Sydney and weren't bored a single day. They had been in Melbourne already for 3 days and had difficulty finding things to do and that exactly is the problem with Melbourne, there just isn't many things to do. Unless you know people in here, this city can be very boring and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Go to Sydney instead, or even Brisbane which wasn't that great but still prettier than Melbourne. Adelaide is now only state capital I haven't seen but so far I would list capitals in following order: Darwin, Perth, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra(obviously last hehe).

Tero, out.

Sorrento

Day 265

"I used to dream
I used to glance beyond the stars
Now I don't know where I are
Although I know I've drifted far"

Last week, tuesday morning I was sitting in Melbourne domestic terminal in front of boarding gate. Clock was 5:45 and I was really tired and slightly annoyed that I had to go to Sydney, visit my consulate to apply for new passport. Suddenly I notice a sign in front of boarding gate:

"SORRY. NO HOT STUFF. (except for yourself of course)"

Hehe, immediately there was yet again smile on my face and I couldn't stop chuckling. I love this country! Impossible to feel miserable here. How can I ever return from here?

Yes, it's been looong time since last update. I was planning to write one in Sorrento about 4-5 days ago but Tom and Tess had some issues with Telstra and no internet in their house. So I had to wait until back in Melbourne to write next entry. So where was I when writing last entry...oh yea, in Launceston Tasmania so there has been quite a lot since then...or not.

When I got back to Melbourne from Tasmania little over week ago on sunday I had pretty hectic schedule. On monday I headed to Yarra Yarra Valley for some wine touring.

Yarra Yarra valley is the most famous wine region in Victoria so I had to see what it had to offer. Well, wines were really diverse there, no real pattern. First winery was horrible, second was good, third was crap and fourth was amazing. On tour we also got to see little bit of what the bushfires have done to local landscapes. Damage seemed just massive in there, lot of vineyards have been burned down.

On tuesday I went to Sydney. This was my third visit to that city and again, city just blew me away with it's beauty.

Sydney is just stunningly beautiful. When I was on ferry from Double Bay to Circular Quay views just gave me cold shivers, it is just that gorgeous. You just keep looking at the view and almost forgetting to breath. I still can't understand how man can build such beauty in one city.

Since passport application took only about 30 minutes I had couple of hours to kill in Sydney. Decided to head to Hotel Australia in The Rocks to eat something exotic...Saltwater Crocodile pizza. Wasn't really that good :-)

On flight back to Melbourne I REALLY got to see what scale the damage of the bushfires in Victoria actually is. It is just bloody massive! Entire forests and national parks have burned down and it was all too visible from plane. It will take decades until it is all healed.

So back in Melbourne and on wednesday I headed to Sorrento for rest of the week. Sorrento is little beach town at the end of Mornington Peninsula about 1.5h drive from Melbourne. Why there? Well, back in July in Broome I met Tom and Tessa, a couple from Sorrento and they told me to message them if I ever get to the area. So, 8 months later I sent them message asking to stay with them for few days and celebrate my birthday on process.

Tom and Tess were great hosts. I even had own room in their house right in middle of Sorrento town. Here are some pics of the beaches surrounding the town.


5 days there just flew by and had a great time. One day I went diving and had one of the better dives in my short career. On one single dive I got to see about 10 Sea Drgaons, 5 Sea Horses, Huge Maori Octopus, Stingray, Cuttlefish and many many other things. Even the divemaster said that out of the 100+ dives he had done on that location, it was propably the best so far.

Other day 3 of us went wine touring around Mornington Peninsula wineries. Hmmm, wines weren't really that great there, but that didn't stop the winemakers from trying to sell their stuff to us. Their method seemed to have been "get-them-drunk"-method since they just kept pouring us wines after wines and big glasses as well. No wonder Tess nearly passed out at the car on way back to Sorrento :-)

Now I'm back in cold and cloudy Melbourne trying to figure out how to spend next 3 days here. On thursday I'm heading to St Kilda suburb in Melbourne for 2 more days before embarking on Great Ocean Road tour on saturday morning. Have couple of surprise things planned on St Kilda, but we will see if they work out hehe

Last pic is for CSI enthusiastics...what the hell is this and what happened??

Lost Luggage

Day 256

"Far across the world
The villages go by like trees
the rivers and the hills
The forest and the streams"

This time there really isn't anything write about. I just checked my camera and noticed that I haven't taken a single picture after the 6-day tour around Tasmania ended. So no new pics unfortunately.

After tour I stayed an extra 2 days in Hobart to sort out the lost luggage issue. Turns out it's not really that big deal. Since I had left most of my stuff back in the hostel, Passport was the only really valuable item in the bag. All other stuff was just toiletries and cheap clothes. If I would have lost my credit cards, then I wouold have been seriously fucked. So I had chance to do some serious shopping hehe.

I also booked flight to Sydney next tuesday to visit consulate. It turned out that Sydney consulate is only place in Australia, New Zealand or South Pacific where Finnish citizen is able to get new passport. Its stroke of luck that this event happened relatively close to Sydney and not in...lets say Cook Islands where there are no direct flights to Sydney. What will happen is that I go to consulate, enter my details and have my passport pictures taken and after that it will take about 3 weeks for the passport to arrive here. After that consulate in Sydney will send it to "sub-consulate" in Perth where my flight away from Australia is departing. So I will just pick it up before I fly away to get out of the country, easy :-)

I also managed to sort out myh next 2 weeks. After flight to Sydney I'm heading to Sorrento, hour south from Melbourne to spend some time exploring Morento Peninsula wineries and celebrate my b-day with Tom and Tess(couple I met in Broome last July). After that I can hopefully grab tickets to AFL season opener on 26th and 27th and on 28th head out from Melbourne and F1-fanatics. Yea, one might wonder why I am skipping F1 when I'm so close to it, but to be honest, not that interested of that sport and besides getting any kind of accomodation in Melbourne at that weekend is pain in the ass. Already most hostels are fully booked. I feel like moving on toward Adelaide and Western Australia.

Back to Hobart...luckily 2 people - Stef and Hester - from my Tasmania tour stayed in town as well so I spent some time with them whenever I didn't have to meet up with the police. Wednesday I left Hobart to Launceston for 3 nights. Plan was to take winery tour on one day and brewery tour on one day. Arranging winery tour turned out to be quite difficult. There are 2 operators in Launceston but neither had any bookings for thursday or friday so no wineries :( I was able to squueze myself into "Beer Lovers" brewery tour to Boag's brewery though. Boag's beers are among the most highly awarded beers in entire world. Have won many gold medals and after full tasting...I can understand why. They do have lot more taste than your average VB crap :-)

Now I'm still in Launceston watching thunderstorm outside and waiting for my bus to Devonport and ferry to take me back to Melbourne. Tomorrow my plan is to file insurance claim to IF and hopefully get around 500 euros back from them. On monday I'm hoping to book winery tour to Victoria's most famous wine area, Yarra Yarra Valley and buy some nice b-day wines for myself and b-day guests.

Bah, just realized that within 59 days I will be in home again...I don't want to leave from here :-/

Taste Of Tasmania

Day 251

"Many faces I have know
Many way in which I've grown
Moving closer on my own"

What to do when you lose Passport in foreign country? Well, I guess this trip wouldn't be complete if I didn't have to find it out. But let's start the story from beginning. Last tuesday March 3rd I hopped onto Adventure Tour bus at 6:30am and started 6-day tour around the island with 9 other people.

Day one
First day included lot of driving towards wild west coast. West coast of Tasmania is basically one big National Park with one road going through it. It is complete wilderness without even footpaths. There are some short walks from the one road but that is it. We did some of these small walks, even though weather was just crazy. High winds and heavy rain all day. But rainfall ment that waterfalls were nice :)

During day we managed to see couple of more rare Australian animals in wild including this Pandemelon(or something), smalles marsupial in Oz

...and Echidna.

Towards late afternoon we arived to a funny little town, Queenstown. Place was not quite the same as Queenstown in New Zealand as you can see.

Queenstown is perfect example how delicate nature in Australia is to human influence. Few decades ago Queenstown was thriving mining town with beautiful forests surrounding it. Population was close to 20,000. As miners extracted rock from mines and burned it, they didn't realise that rock in the area had lot of acid in it. This acid then got released into air and result was acid rains which destroyed all forests and native plants in area leaving Queenstown area looking like a crater from the Moon. Population decreased and is about 1,500 these days and is not increasing despite the fact that area is slowly healing and plants are returning. Our guide summed up Queenstown like this:

"Guys, if you ever need to escape from the world, there are some really cheap real estates in Queenstown."

Anyway, all were happy to leave Australia's Queenstown behind after 15 minutes and we headed to our first night stop in Strahan. House we stayed in was pretty cool with nice kitchen where we were really able to get to know each other while having quite a few beers.


Day two
Second day we woke up to extremely heavy rain and winds. We stopped for morning coffee in Strahan were main attraction I guess were these suicidal ducks.

We continued road up the west coast and stopped first at a "beach". Apparently this beach was one of the nicest in west coast and people quite often came there to swim and surf. Well, it wasn't really a weather for either of those :)

I think our tour guide put it best when he said:

"Anyone wanna go down to the beach and poke the dead seal?"

Yup, there was indeed dead rotten seal in the beach. I didn't take a picture of it cause it was honestly quite grosse. But I guess that summed up the beach well enough...fact that there was dead seal right in middle and it had been rotting there for quite a while.

So, next stop was sandhills where we had some luck and rain stopped. So we engaged into some childish activities like jumping down a 50m sandcliff.

After sandhills we headed to next destination...more waterfalls! This one was suppose to be one of the biggest in Tasmania and was called Montezuma falls. Montezuma falls was named by aboriginal people who met early seafaring Aztecs and exchanged gifts way before any Europeans stepped on Australia...yea right :-D Our guide told us that story and we almost believed him. He said that he is amazed the amount of bullshit he can tell to tourists and most of it they actually believe.

Walk to falls was quite long, little over hour through very wet and cold rainforest. That is why we were very surprised and shocked when all the sudden we stumbled on this Tigersnake right in the middle of the path.

For the record, Tigersnakes are 4th most venomous snakes in world so not something you want to get too close with. So now I have seen 3 out of 4 most venomous snakes in world: Taipan in Cooktown, Western Brown in Rottnest and Tigersnake in Tasmania. Only thing missing is Eastern Brown.

Finally we arrived to waterfall and yea, it was big and pretty. Almost worth getting completely soaked :)

After waterfall we headed to our 2nd night stop in Cradle Mountains. Since our hut was at 900m altitude, temperature dropped to +2 during night, damn it was freezing! Again we stayed up quite late with help of beer and 2 norwegian girls :-)

Day three
Third day was our big hike day. We set off from our hut to Cradle Mountain.

I was really hoping to walk to summit, but weather wasn't permitting it. There was actually a snowstorm up in the summit so I wasn't going to walk up there with my summer sneakers. Some of us did manage to climb up to first lookout about half-way to summit but the snowline started even from there so we did't continue and instead took our silly photos from there(Christ, I had to jump like 10 times before Tatjana managed to press the button at right moment).

After about 5h of walking and getting snowball to my head from Steffi we jumped back into the bus and headed to Devonport, our 3rd night stop. On way there, our guide told us quite interesting things about Tasmanian aboriginals. After this story I can safely say that indians in America were treated like royalty compared to what settlers did to aboriginals in Tasmania.

First of all, last full-blooded aboriginal in Tasmania died over 100 years ago. When Tasmania was settled, aboriginals were hunted and killed to almost extinction. There was an actual martial law against them which allowed anyone to shoot aboriginal and no questions were asked. Tasmania had 0ver 10,000 aboriginals before settlers and that number decresed to 150 before someone thought "hey, maybe this is not right". Unfortunately it was too late.

At Devonport we took our first big group photo at the lighthouse there since Chris was leaving us and heading back to mainland from Devonport.

Day four
On (now infamous)fourth day we started to move towards east coast. On the way we said goodbyes to Chris and picked up 3 more passengers from Launceston to join our tour. Funny, Tasmania is not that small island but its not big. It's actually little bigger than Ireland, but contrasts are huge. Whereas west coast was full of rain, waterfalls, rainforests and mountains, then east coast is the tropical side with very dry landscape and beautiful beaches.

First stop for us was Bay Of Fires in northeast corner, gorgeous beach where 2 of us(Johannes and I) were actually brave enough to go swimming...it was cold, shrimp cold.

Now, this is where it happened. We headed off from Bay Of Fires towards Devil's Park near Bicheno where we were going to watch Tasmanian Devils being fed. Our tour guide forgot to lock trailer in our minibus and during the 100km drive door in the trailer opened and everything fell off...without anyone seeing or hearing anything. Hmm...sweet, my passport was in my bag.

Well, we still went to Devil's Park and our guide headed back to road in desperate effort to find our lost luggage. At this point our spirits were surprisingly high and we didn't really think about the lost luggage and insted just wondered how cute and cuddly the Tasmanian Devils are.

After about 1.5h Jason came back...no luggage. At this point we knew that some of the bags would never be found, but we still kept our spirits high. We went to our 4th night stop in Bicheno and guide continued on back to where we came from in search of the bags. He eventually came bnack at 11pm with just 2 bags.

Day five
Ok, we forgot about the bag episode this day because otherwise it would ruin the visit to Wineglass Bay, widely regarded as one of the best beaches in entire world. Weather was beatiful for hike up the hill for view of the beach...omg, now THIS is a beach!

After hill walk and nice leisurely walk down to beach for more silly photos(this time I only had to jump 3 times before Hester got the photo).

What a gorgeous beach this really was!

We were also treated with very surprising visit, all the sudden I saw like 5 thins in the water coming towards beach, Dolphins. They came just within 30m from beach and played around with swimmers, was quite amazing to see it. Unfortunately I had my camera tucked away at that point so I couldn't get photos.

After about 6h in Wineglass Bay we headed off south towards Tasman Peninsula and our 5th night stop in Port Arthur where we had yet another great evening drinking, playing pool and cards.

Day six
Port Arthur. Now, this place is one of the most popular tourist attractions in entire Australia. Port Arthur was a penal colony back in 19th century. It was founded 1830 and closed down 1877. During it's time, it was said to be too inhuman and cruel. Now, if they said it was inhuman at 1830, I can only imagine how cruel place it actually was...no, I can't really understand.

Port Arthur is also infamous about episode in 1996 when young man went to Port Arthur from Hobart and killed 35 people within an hour or so. As a result, Australia completely changed their gunlaws. These days this country has one of the most strict gunlaws in entire world. Dammit, more I spend time in this country the more I wonder how RIGHT Australia has it. I mean...in Finland we had 2 school massacres within year and what has government done to improve things?? Nothing!! We have so fucking much to learn from Australia.

Anyway, back to present day. So Porth Arthur has a very black history. They actually tried to change town name while ago to attract more people to move in but since Port Arthur penal colony site was so popular tourist attraction, they kept the name.

We arrived very early in the morning which was nice since by the time we left the area, there was literally thousands of tourists and more coming in all the time. Area itself was huge, I could have spent all day there reading stories about prisoners but we only had about 4h.

As we started our way back to Hobart we stopped few times to see coastal features of Tasman Peninsula and grabbed the last group photo.

*sniff* was kinda sad to finally say goodbye to all the friends I spent last 6 days living, breathing and eating with. Here is pic of the route we took around Tasmania.

So now it's time to come back to reality with the passport issue. After few calls and police reports it looks like I have to visit Consulate in Sydney very briefly because they are only place who can issue new passport. Dunno if my travel insurance will cover the flights to Sydney since I'm not really planning to stay there again so I'll be flying there in the morning and back to Hobart in the evening. I'll keep updating situation...

Whew, done. I was dreading to write this entry and actually had so much more to say but even now this has taken me 2.5h internet in Hobart is not cheap. I guess it's good thing I didn't get all things to this entry, have some stories still left when I get back home...wherever that will be.... :-)