Cote d'Azor

Right, so after a LOT of work with my photos, I'm just ready for a break without computers. The most backward part of Europe I could get a cheap ticket for on short notice turned out to be the Azores, a slightly unfortunately named archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean.

(This photo happens to be from Madeira, which is same same, but different.)

I'll just be hiking and taking more photos (*sigh*, more photo editing coming up) and getting rid of a couple of kilograms of fresh Easter chocolate attachments to my body.

Rumour has it that the rest of the island will be dominated by elderly people and flower lovers, so I'm pretty sure you shouldn't envy me too much. On the other hand, my only alternative was Mallorca, so I'm really looking forward to this, relatively speaking.

So, I'll probably report back in a week or so, telling you all how pleasantly surprised I was by what I found in the middle of the ocean.

Enjoy your spring!

B.

Around The Female Moustache

Hah! That's me getting back at all Australians for making fun of me when I didn't immediately understand that a noah is another word for "shark", because noah comes from Noah's Ark, which rhymes with shark. Anyway, "female moustache" is what you get if you translate "Hobart" to Norwegian. So there you have it.

Anyway, readers of this blog may recall that in December I went to Tasmania to see how many blisters I could cover my feet in just by hiking in the national parks there. It was a great success, and I have now put up a gallery with photos from my expedition.


What I found was square-shaped wombatshit, ice cubes on the beach (which turned out to be still potent fragments of stinging jellyfish crushed by the waves), wooden highways across the mountain plains, robots emptying the trash and a summery blizzard. Foreign parts is a strange place!

You can find the photos at the end of the rainbow, and here.

In related news, I'm fine and enjoying the Easter break in a fairly nice and warm Norway. There are just a thousand or so photos left to mess with (from New South Wales), after which I'll hopefully be free to move on with my life. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I have just 60 days of work left to do this year. This means I shall have to find a new project fairly soon.

It probably won't be a trip to Ibiza.

Many thanks to Tasmania for your cooperation!

Bjørn #8D)

Western Australia Greenery

So, I'm still working my way through the photos I took in Australia recently. Almost 97 percent of them fell through in quality control, but what remains can safely be presented to you. I think.

Anyway, while Western Australia north of Perth turned out to be red, the regions south of Perth are definitely dominated by green. If you like big trees and smooth rock, I think you'll find a walk through this gallery worth your while.

And now... Tasmania... *Sigh* (This may take a while.)

Bjørn #8D)

99 Western Australia Moments

Phew! I've gone through about a third of the photos I brought home from Australia recently. They cover the stretch between Perth and Broome, which is a trip on its own, therefore deserving a gallery on its own.


Unsurprisingly to those of you who follow my blog, these are mainly photos of wilderness and scenery. This part of my trip met all my expectations for a visit to the rugged parts of Australia. Red sand, strange animals and birds, mysterious tracks in the sand and lots of stuff only recently discovered by people.

You'll find the photos here.

Oh well. On to the rest of the photos from the southern part of Western Australia and some hikes in Tasmania... We'll see us again shortly! #8D)

Bjørn

Spent in Australia

(Or: Why Australia's tourism is doomed.)

I'm about to publish photos and text from my recent ten-week trip to Australia. Whenever I do something like that, it quickly triggers a steady flow of e-mails with questions about the trip. Many of the questions will be about how much the trip cost me.

Usually I have to say I don't really know. I never prepare a budget for my trips, I just pay my way from one place and/or activity to another as I go. This time, however, I sort of felt that I spent more than usual, so today I went through my bank transactions from my time in Australia.

Oh boy, did I spend! I'm not complaining, obviously, as the trip brought lots of those moments of happiness that make me travel. But in hindsight, I certainly could have done a lot of exciting things in other parts of the world for the amount of cash I left behind in Australia!


So, to assist those of you considering a trip to Australia, here are some boring, but hopefully useful pieces of information about how much a trip like mine will cost you.

Mind you, I'm pretty much self-activated when I travel. Wherever I am, I will find something to do. Usually that is to just walk around and observe. I didn't do any skydiving, bungee-jumping, cruises, guided tours or participate in any of the infinite and often over-priced activities on offer everywhere in Australia.

You want an example of what I'm talking about? Well, go to Sydney and see the Harbour Bridge, and you're likely to think "Hey! I would really like to enjoy the view from the top of that bridge!" And guess what? You can! Only thing is that you have to book ahead and be ready to spend three and a half hours on it, including a "safety demonstration" and donning of special clothes. And the cost? 189 Australian dollars! (About 120 US dollars). To walk some stairs! Unless you want to do it around sunset, of course. Then it's 249 AUD (160 USD). Or why not do the climb at dawn? Because it costs AUD295 (190 USD), that's why! Oh, and I forgot to mention that you're not even allowed to bring a camera. You ARE, however, allowed to pay a stiff price for a copy of photos that your "Climb Leader" will take during your walk.

The most amazing thing about the bridge climb is not the price they charge for it, or the view from the top of the bridge, but the fact that two million people have done the walk since they started in 1998! Not bad for a bridge that cost just ten million Australian dollars to build (in 1932).

Even if you stay away from the cities, opting for hiking in some of the great scenery Australia offers, you can easily spend a fortune. A guided hike through Tasmania's wilderness for 5-7 days will typically set you back AUD 2000-2500 (USD 1300-1600). Granted, you may be staying at cabins with wine cellars and jacuzzis and you will not have to carry much, but this is still an insane rate for spending a few days surrounded in scenery that was originally provided by Mother Earth at no cost.

Being from Norway, I appreciate the fact that to maintain an elevated standard of living in a country, relatively high prices on everything is a necessity. However, while travelers on low budgets are smart enough to avoid Norway, it seems that just about everyone and her brother on their trips around the world spend half their budget on doing surprisingly little for a few weeks in Downunder. (Yes, New Zealand, I'm talking about you too!) They could have done SO much better, value-for-money-wise, by heading elsewhere.

Anyway, here are my key numbers, in Australian dollars to minimize the effect of changes in exchange rates:

My total expenses, including everything: About AUD 10000.
Average cost per day (70 days), including airfare from Norway: AUD 140.
Average cost per day excluding airfare from Norway: AUD 101.

Airfare
Shoulder/high season tickets, Oslo, Norway - Perth and Sydney - Oslo: AUD 2800. Just getting there contributes about a quarter of all costs. It therefore makes sense to stay for a while.

Accommodation
Including a number of nights in a tent in the wilderness: AUD 1100. In smaller towns I paid AUD20-25 per night, in cities AUD30-35. There are cheaper hostels in the cities, but I prefer places with good safety and relative silence after 11pm, and they cost a little bit extra (often YHA hostels).

Food
I'm not sure how much of my expenses went towards food and drinks, but a fast food meal was about AUD 10 (pizza, burger, kebab, chicken). A modest restaurant meal was about twice that. Cooking properly with groceries at the hostel will be cheaper than AUD 10 only if you share your meal with others. In Western Australian small towns you will find that groceries are MUCH more expensive than in large towns and the east coast. Shop ahead in chain stores if you can (there's usually a Coles, Woolworths or IGA around). To me, chocolate is an essential necessity. It's fairly expensive in Australia, but the chains regularly have good offers on some brand of chocolate, bringing a large bar (200-250 grams) down to AUD 3-4.

Transportation
Getting around is a major expense in rural Australia. The distances are vast and the competition is low. You can often fly relatively cheaply, but then you miss out on the scenery between your stops.

Greyhound is a good bus company, but their schedule is not good for traveling to smaller places. I went with a slightly more expensive option, Easyrider Tours, you can jump off and on the bus again when you like, and they make stops at interesting places on a schedule that means only traveling and arriving to places during daytime. (And we only broke down in the middle of nowhere once!) The ticket for seven days of travel from Perth and north towards Broome was AUD 750, and the ticket for a three day loop south of Perth via Albany was AUD 320.

My flights: Broome - Perth at AUD 165. Perth - Melbourne at AUD 120. Hobart - Melbourne at AUD 150.

I took the ferry from Melbourne to Tasmania, and I got a last minute special offer day ticket at AUD 45. The normal one-way rate was AUD 128, high-season AUD 179.

I used the train from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, a good deal at about AUD20. I also used the train from there to Port Macquarie and back, costing about AUD 70 each way. I also took a night bus from Melbourne to Sydney at AUD 75, with Firefly. Greyhound offer roughly the same service at the same price.

While traveling, I got the idea I wanted to do the Overland Track hike in Tasmania. I had to get a trekking permit at AUD 150 allowing me to spend as long on the walk as I wanted, as long as I started hiking on a specific day. To be allowed onto the track I had to be "properly equipped". Even though it was in the middle of summer, that meant I needed a decent tent and some warm wind- and rainproof clothing. I bought cheap, but good stuff at a chain store, All Goods, at AUD 275.

There you have it. Now, think twice before you head for Australia. It's a beautiful place, but so is most of the rest of the world, many parts of which can be had at significantly lower rates...

Happy trails!

Back in the hiber-nation

I'm back, and I'm alive, as promised! Some of you have worried about the silence in this blog. Since it's common knowledge that most visitors to Australia end up in hospital or as some kind of animal fodder, I clearly should have announced my safe return before now. I'm sorry!

Incidentally, I DID end up in a hospital. Fortunately I was just visiting, and the reason I visited was that it was a koala hospital, where I was hoping to cheer up the poor, fluffy critters. Which I did, possibly. It's hard to tell whether a sleepy koala is satisfied or not. Anyway, I know for sure that one of them did not enjoy my visit too much, as I for all practical purposes pretty much killed it.

Before I went to the koala hospital, I took a walk in the forest nearby, in Port Macquarie, well north of Sydney. I had come there just to see koalas, and I wanted to see them in the wild. I found one, and I photographed it with much enthusiasm. Later on, I went to the koala hospital in town, and since I was quite proud to have found a wild koala (well, that's an oxymoron, obviously, but you know what I mean, one that lives in the forest on its own), I showed the photos I had taken of it to a koala doctor.

She had a good look at the photos, and then she declared that this was one sick koala I had found! I had thought that a runny bottom just might be a feature of koalas, not a bug, but apparently it is caused by koalic syphilis! I don't know where they find the energy to do anything that might cause sexually transmitted diseases to actually move from koala to koala, but they seem to do it somehow.

So what happened was that the animal was collected from its tree, and, per my directions, brought back to the hospital so that it couldn't infect any other sexy koalas. It was so sick that they were unable to cure it, so they would simply have to end its life. I'm sure they gave it a nice meal, and maybe a cigar, before they cuddled it to death. Still, I feel kinda bad for it. If not for me, it would have continued its forestial fornication, and I'm sure it would have enjoyed that very much. My only comfort is that what happened was certainly for the greater good.

That was just about the last thing I did in Australia. Before that I spent some days hiking in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, after some good, but cool days in and near Hobart, Tasmania. On my last day there I hiked up Mount Wellington, 1200 metres of impressive mountain with a view of the city.

It was right in the middle of the summer, but the weather was reluctant to accept the fact. It got colder as I ascended the mountain, and with about 200 vertical metres to go, it started snowing. I kept on walking, and the snow kept on getting more intense. As I arrived at the top, it was pretty much a blizzard going on around me.

I don't mind a bit of snow. What was much worse was the fact that when I finally came up there, I discovered that there is actually a road leading up there, and there were several cars parked next to a roofed viewing platform. From which there was absolutely nothing to see, apart from the usual white wall of a blizzard.

To cheer myself up while I waited for the weather to clear, I decided to build a snowman. Now, even with this being Tasmania, rough and cold weather like that is unusual. So a team from the local TV station came up there to report on the weird phenomenon of midsummer snow. And what could possibly be more intriguing than a story about a good-looking backpacker from the other side of the world building a snowman on the top of their mountain? Well, I'll tell you: A story about a local, cute little girl with blonde hair and wearing a pink dress building a snowman on the top of their mountain. She saw what I was doing, and copied the idea! She stole my thunder, or my blizzard, as it were!

Such is life, I guess.

Anyway, I had a good time the last couple of weeks in Australia, and eventually I will be able to prove it through my photos. When I copied them onto my computer at home, I learnt that there are 4443 photos I need to choose a few from to show you. I'll be working on that for a while...

As an appetizer, please have a look at the photos from my stop in Singapore on my way to Australia.

Bjørn, non-syphilitic

Catching up

I've been unable to keep the blog going, but yes, I am still traveling. Since leaving you suspended in Walpole I've moved on through Albany, Perth and Melbourne to Tasmania. Here I've hiked quite a bit to while away Christmas, and I just witnessed New Year's Eve in Hobart, which by the way translates to "female moustache" in Norwegian. I'm not entirely sure it's a fair description of the city, but at least the hostel I'm staying at (The Pickled Frog) is fairly hairy.

From here I'll soon be moving back to the mainland and Sydney. For now I'm not quite sure what I should blog about. A lot of things are happening, and the imp inside my camera is working hard on documenting it all. I'll just briefly give you some vital information, not necessarily facts:

* Near Albany I witnessed giant waves hitting the cliffs on the Flinders Peninsula. These waves push all of Australia northwards at a pace of 5 centimeters per year. This means that in 80 million years, Australia will be back where it is now, having traveled around the world!

* Unlike ravens in the rest of the world, Australian ravens like to inhale helium from balloons, which makes them sound like Smurf-Ravens. It's a lot of fun listening to them whining.

* There's a brand of beer here called XXXX, because no one knew how to spell "beer" when they were to market their new brew.

* Hostels in the countryside are often empty, so I've spent a few nights having dorms all to myself. Hostels in the cities are full of Asians who spend the nights fornicating in the bathrooms. This is much unlike the situation ten years ago, when all Asians were traveling on their own and being very intellectual about it.

* The Overland Track, a hiking trip that comes to about 100 kilometers of walking if you include all sidetrips you should do, is limited to allowing only 60 or so walkers onto it per day. This is because the hike is very popular because it's got a cool name AND all the strenuous parts of it are outfitted with boardwalks. I'm pretty sure that if they had called it "The Aboriginal Track" instead, hardly any Australians at all would have walked it, and they would not have had to limit the number of walkers. It seems that anything that has something to do with Aboriginals is largely ignored by most of the people in Godzone.

* On the cold beaches of the southern part of Western Australia there is often a larger contingent of rescue team members than there is of swimmers and sunbathers. And they're not even being paid to be there, as they are volunteers. They don't have to do much, since the water is so cold that I'm surprised there weren't more penguins around.

* Tasmania is STILL full of criminals, it seems. Wherever I go, stuff I put in the communal fridge seems to disappear into thin air. Oh well, mustn't grumble...

* Hiking in Freycinet includes a lot of climbing of rocks. The park receives 300 000 visitors annually, of which many are NOT experienced hikers, but they hike anyway. Because of this, I am happy to report that underwear seems to be rarely used in this country. I've seen an awful lot of people in awkward positions negotiating steep hills in ways that shows off large areas of buttcrack. There's hardly any sign of anyone wearing undies at all!

* I'm still alive.

And I'll be back. I promise.

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!

Australia Number 1!

The Downunders are competitive people. Now they have managed to become the number one polluting nation in the world (as in both hemispheres) per capita! Thanks to long distances that needs to be covered to move people and goods around, many a large town that is run not on power plants but on diesel aggregates, numerous heavily polluting mines and lots and lots of farting sheep, they're really running the planet down!

It seems they intend to keep this position. There's not much more they can do to become worse, but they sure try hard. Between Perth and the rest of the country there's both a road and a railroad. On the road there is no scheduled bus service. If you want to go by road, you'll have to buy a car and drive it across the Nullarbor plains. If you want to go by train, which presumably would hurt the environmental badness of Australia, you'll have to book your ticket well in advance. There's only ONE weekly train between Perth and Adelaide/Sydney, and on that train there are only about 124 sleeper seats!

The result? There are LOTS of flights, both cheap and expensive ones, to and from Perth, and people get on them. It seems that will have to be my option as well, although I really wanted to cross the Nullarbor by land. I've already seen the second longest straight stretch of land, near Coral Bay, so I don't think I'm missing out on much, but still...

What's more, Australia has managed the impressive feat of becoming the most obesive nation in the world! The US is really losing all their hegemonies these days. Food is not even particularly cheap here, they still eat and eat and eat, and leave most of the exercise to be done in Australia to their Olympic swimming team. Sustain-a-belly dwell-up-ment, they call it, I believe.

To make sure that nobody performs any slimming activities, the Australians have introduced tight limits on how many people are allowed to go on the most beautiful walks available in the country. On The Overland Track in Tasmania, for instance, only about 60 people are allowed onto the track per day. And a large portion of those who walk it are actually foreigners. Like me! I'll be going on December 24, yay! I still have to make my way to Tasmania in time for it, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

Right now I'm warming up for the Overland Track by walking sections on the Bibbulmun Track in the south of Western Australia. It's also a beautiful walk, with amazing, tall Karri trees. In a couple of months I'll show you the photos.

Nature Calls

I just had the most intense cinema experience of my life, in the Sun Pictures outdoor movie theatre.

Since the wet season is starting, pretty much all tours and destinations north of Broome are closed down for the season. So, to get to see at least some of it, I went to see the movie "Australia", which was shot in the Kimberley region just north of Broome. Now, there's nothing special about the movie, but that movie and that cinema is just about the best combo I've come across ever since I tried putting potato chips on bread. You should try it once. Both the cinema and the chips.

The cinema is "the world's oldest picture gardens", which may be true, or maybe it's just something the Australians like to think, like they often do, and when they discover there's something older, better, faster, taller somewhere, they just add "in the Southern Hemisphere", and then they're usually right. Anyway, the place is from 1912 or so, and it hasn't changed much in the meantime. Everything is built in slightly termite-chewed wood, on the walls there are old movie posters, you sit in beach chairs on a lawn, and the popcorn tastes just perfect.

The movie, however, is brand new. Nicole Kidman is in it, but she is bare noticable compared to the main star of the movie, namely the landscape of the Kimberley. It's an easy plot. An English lady comes to Australia to see to her husband and her property. The husband dies, so that the lady can fall in love with a cowboy. WW2 begins, the Japanese are bad guys and the Aboriginals are good guys, and there's a happy ending. Fair enough.

While the movie is basic, watching it outdoors in Broome is fantastic, because:


* When the movie begins you discover that the screen has lots of geckos on it, running around and feasting on the flies that are attracted by the light from the movie. Some flies are caught by large bats instead, and the bats seem even larger when they're projected onto the screen as they fly in front of the light beam of the movie. And if that's not enough wildlife for you, you'll find that lizards and snakes wiggle their way through the grass just in front of you during the parts of the movie when the audience is quiet enough.

* It turns out that the cinema you're in also is IN the movie! Suddenly watching the movie is like looking into a mirror, except the people in the mirror are wearing 1942 clothing, and they look straight back at you. Surreal! (The movie was shot in the very same cinema.)

* The highlight of the movie was during a scene where Japanese war planes are on their way to bomb the town in the movie. I have no idea how they did it, but just then a large plane flew 50 meters above our heads, making a deafening sound! The cinema is right next to the local airport, so it could of course happening, but the timing was just unreal!

An evening to remember, for sure.

There's much more to tell, but the short story for now is that I flew back to Perth from Broome, and I am now doing the southern part of Western Australia. When I'm done with that I'll go to Tasmania. You see, I've managed to secure a place on the VERY limited access Overland Track there, starting on December 24. I am very excite!

I'll get back to you soon. If I don't fall down from the Bicentennial Tree tomorrow, that is. Google it. #8D)

Careless being carless in Karijini

Wohey! I've just spent some days in the prettiest thing Australia has on offer now that the impressive buttocks of both Kylie and Elle seems to have gone missing.

First you drive for hours and hours and hours across flat land that from a distance looks so nice, green and lush that you have to wonder why the sheep standing along the road look so grumpy. Then you make a stop, to pee or to pull a rotting kangaroo corpse off the road, or both, and you see that between the green bushes there's plenty of red, infertile dirt, and the bushes themselves are armed with long, sharp, lethal needles that could outcompete any kind of porcupine. Poor sheep!

Every 300 kilometers or so there's a petrol station and a roadhouse, and you don't drive past it. You stop, and you fill your tank with petrol at a price two or three times what you might have had to pay for it in any of this continent's major cities. Or if you're twelve years old or so, maybe you just spend all your pocket money for the entire week on a can of Coke or something like that. Life is hard, and expensive, in the outback.

Maybe you drive through Marble Bar, a place that a few hundred souls calls home, and they're proud of the fact that they officially live in the hottest town in Australia. The title was won when they for 160 days in a row could observe the thermometer rise to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 37.8 degrees Celsius. That's actually true, just look here.

Then, right in the middle of the dry hell, you suddenly arrive in the Karijini National Park. It's still a hot place to visit, but you don't care. Down in the many gorges in the park the temperature is bearable, especially because there's a large number of places you can swim and cool down, natural pools that underground rivers fill up with fairly cool water. Besides, it's all just so stunningly beautiful that you forget about the heat.

I spent the last 4-5 days in the park, almost all on my own. During this time of the year the temperature is usually even higher than what it has been lately, and because of this, very few people plan to go there to enjoy themselves between December and March.

I had been warned that I would have to bring all the supplies I would need. But when I arrived, I found a lovely camp, Karijini Eco Retreat, supported by the aboriginal community, where I could get cold drinks, and where I could rent a nice tent with a bed in it. And I could zip off the outer walls of the tent, so that at night a cooling breeze could come in and help me sleep, and in the mornings I would lie in my bed and look out at brilliant sunsets, beautiful colours gradually filling the sky, creating the perfect backdrop for the silhouettes of acasia and eucalyptus trees. Now, THERE's a good way to start your day!

I went on a walkabout in the park. Or to be more exact, I got lost. I carried plenty of water, so it wasn't really a problem. Well, I survived, anyway. I found my way back to the camp, but before doing so, I found a tree that stood by itself, gushing out blood. "That's weird", I said to myself, and photographed it. Back in the camp I showed the photo to the people working there, and they were impressed.

Apparently I had found a pharmacy tree, and it was bleeding/producing medicine as if there was no tomorrow, which was rather unusual, I was told. I took some people back to the tree and we gathered crystallized chunks of the "blood" from the bloodwood tree. The stuff is supposed to be good for your heart, and dissolved in boiling water it becomes a drink that will cure a cold and stop your coughing. They let me try it, but since I did not have a cold the medicine must have become confused, and helped me produce copious amounts of gas instead. It's a good thing I had a tent for myself, and that there were no immediate neighbours of it either.

Supposedly I got off easy. I met someone else who also had tried drinking The Stuff, and she had just started ejecting the contents of her stomach both upwards and downwards. At least she had lost her cough! I'll bring some blood crystals back home with me, so that you, my friends, also can get to try it. It tastes horrible.

Anyway, I'm still alive, and I have now vroomed to Broome. I haven't done much here yet, but I have bought new shorts. The last ones were torn and ripped in dozens of places after too much rough climbing in the Karijini cliffsides. It was SO worth it!