Februari 2020

One of the best high lights in Australia are by far the native animals. They are incredible unique, fascinating and either too cute to be true or too scary to meet. Luckily neither one of the scary creatures came any where near us. As far as we know. So no tall tales about crocs, sharks, spiders, snakes or deadly jellyfish! So far. 🤞

We did encounter countless blue bottles, the ones we already met in Java, just smaller. Blue bottles, also called the Portuguese Man o’War, stop you from going into the ocean. They look like jellyfish, but are polyps with extreme long tentacles delivering a very painful sting. Pretty annoying during a road trip along the coast. These blue bottles however earned our respect as they are skilled sailors and fantastic free divers! With their gas bladder they float on the water and deflate themselves to submerge in case of a surface attack. Plus with this sail-shaped bladder they set their “sail” to float into the right direction. Cool, isn’t it?

The winner of the Australian animal scene is the Koala. By far. It’s truly the cutest animal ever. At Raymond Island they outnumber the humans and are easy to spot. Sleeping 20 hours a day. A close second are obviously the Kangaroos, in all sorts and pieces. They outnumber the people on the Australian continent. If you have not spotted any on your trip you’re probably a big fan of cities 😉. Third place goes to the Kookaburra, a kingfisher bird. During dawn and dusk they pop up and make a loud call, which sounds like human laughing and always make us smile. Wonderful. 😊

I could basically write for hours about our friends with fur, but let’s move on to the state Victoria. Wilsons Promontory National Park really impressed us. It’s the southernmost tip of mainland Australia and magnificent. Remote trails and pristine beaches. We stayed as long as we could, until the wind blowed us away 💨 .

Our next stop: Phillip Island, which moves us back to the animal theme. We absolutely got fascinated at the Penguin Parade (no pics allowed, the one below is taken from the web). The humans are cooped up and the stars of the show are the smallest penguins on earth. Every day after sunset hundreds of them come on shore and waddle across the beach to their homes. In little groups, to be safe from predators. A bit of chitchat about their ocean adventures and off to bed. Adorable. 😍

Given we’re back in the animal theme anyway, I need to mention the possum. The what? The possum. One night a noise woke us up. We moved the curtain aside and were face to face with an animal. Something that look like a cat with weasel traits. One with a little kid on his back. A possum we learned later (see pic – taken from web). Normally pretty rare to spot and there it was. Up close and waking us up. 😃 🙏

From Phillip Island we drove to the Airport for a visa run to Christchurch New Zealand. Given we planned a trip to New Zealand in April, we opted for the cheapest option, allowing us to explore Christchurch in just two days. An interesting town, where the aftermath of the earthquakes in 2010/2011 is still notable.

Back in Melbourne we went from the airport straight to the beach in Torquay. Melbourne had to wait until our friend, Steffi, arrived for a two-week Formula-1-city-road-trip adventure. In Torquay we took the opportunity to settle down for a while. I mean an amazing beach, beautiful waves, nice camp site neighbours and a lively little town. What else shall we look for? 😇

Torquay offers a wide range of activities and so that’s what we did. Enjoying the waves, walking the surf coast trial, visiting Bells Beach – a renowned surf spot for pros – exploring the surf museum, surf pool, watching the Kiteboarding Australia Wave Nationals 2020 and we even went to the RS:X Windsurfing Championships. 😎

Not something we tend to follow, but we couldn’t resist to see the Dutch two-time Olympic gold surfer Dorian van Rijsselberghe and his Dutch buddy Kiran Badloe, who has a good chance of becoming an Olympic champion. It was amazing. The colours of the sails and moreover the relaxed atmosphere. We could walk in the same area where the surfers prepared their equipment and during the competition we chitchatted with their families. Pretty different from let’s say… F1 🙃.

A few days before Steffi arrived we moved to Melbourne. To prepare ourselves to sell Kempie, work on some admin stuff, get ready and monitor the Corona developments and hope her flight would not be impacted. 🤞

Ps. This blog was written before the Covid-19 measures became concerning. Eventually we decided to go home immediately on the 18th of March when the Dutch government advised travellers to go home asap. We never uploaded the blog as it needed a final touch which was lost in all the fuss and it was not the right time. Our minds were somewhere else.