It's been 70 days now since I left Belgium and I thought it's time to finally give you an update on my story :),
So far I've spend most of my time in the big cities... I've seen Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. When I arrived in Brisbane I had the opportunity to go to Sydney with a friend and of course having no plan at all and everything still in the spirit of the floods, I went with him. It was quite an adventure: Saw my first kangooroo and went for a first short walk in the Australian bush. It was a little bit scary, especially after everybody is telling you 'be carefull, there's a lot of snakes around'. After 2 months I'm still not over my fear of snakes, but it's getting better. Winter is coming, so they won't be around so much. Also they told me that they will only attack you if you step on one, but that does not comfort me... After 2 days in Sydney I wanted to leave already: too busy for me, and also that is not why I came to Australia! But in the end I stayed there for about 2 weeks in total. Especially Dario and Andy made it enjoyable for me. Great people! My favourite place there is definitely Manly, a short ferry ride away from the busy CBD :)
Still I wanted to get away from the city, so I planned to do the Great North Walk from Sydney to Newcastle (250km). I was ready to leave, but the fear of snakes took over and I went to Blue Mountains instead to practice a little on short walks. I stayed there for about one and a half weeks because that place is AWESOME! So many day walks you don't know where to start :). I ended up doing all the walks in Katoomba and Wentworth Falls and got to know about leeches (jak). It made me a little bit more comfortable in the Australian bush and I have met some nice people in the hostel! On one of my walks I met a guy named Israel and he invited me and Jennifer (american girl) to come and work on his farm as WWOOFERS. It seemed a great opportunity, so we decided to give it a go. He also owned a restaurant in Katoomba where we got really nice food! Arriving on the farm was a different matter, because it turned out to be a very religious community which name I will not state here...we got out of there after 3 horrible days of eating salad and bread... Having no plans at all, we went back to Sydney together. Later on I left for Newcastle and stayed there for a couple of days to relax and try to forget about that horrible first Wwoofing experience!
Back in Sydney I met back up with Jen and we decided to do a relocation deal together...going to Melbourne by car and getting paid for it, sometimes you just have to know the tricks for travelling cheap :))) It was a rich experience and I will probably never drive a car that big, but that's a different story...we were happy that we arrived in Melbourne so that we could start over.
Meantime I was always looking for a job as a fruitpicker. I didn't find anything in and around Sydney, but in Victoria I was more lucky and found a job in Cobram. I could start right away and so that was the beginning of what would be an awesome three weeks on a farm. We lived in barracks, 2 people in 1 room which is complete luxury when you are travelling in between hostels. The job was also great: peaches and pears and I totally loved it!!! But seeing a lot of great people leave the farm, I thought it was time to move on. It also didn't make as much money as I thought, but I will get another job in South Australia. That's where I'm heading on the 30th of March.
As you can see, I haven't been hiking a lot, but now the time has come for sure. I will meet up with Dim in Adelaide and spend about a week in the city. After that I will go back to Apollo Bay and start the Great Ocean Walk www.greatoceanwalk.com.au. That will be the first long distance hike (250km). When that is finished I'm making my way to Portland by bus to start the Great South West Walk...
I will try to update this blog a little more, especially after hikes, to give an overview of how great it was :))))
