Bye Sydney, Hello Road Trip!
Trip Start
Mar 14, 2012
1
10
17
Trip End
May 07, 2012
Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
Thursday, March 29, 2012
long time no news from me. That's just because I haven’t had any internet the last days. I’ll explain later :) Fact is, that me Fabi and Dennis decided to travel on by Tuesday.
Last Day In Sydney
On our last day in Sydney me and Fabi made the Manly Scenic Walk part two to the other side from Manly wharf. I can tell ya, the Australians don’t like to signs how it seems, cause there never were any showing the right way, but only what we not were allowed to do. We searched our way through a gate signing "Warning Penguin Resort" and got to a tiny Beach with a waterfall in its back. Viewing the waterfall, we saw where the way went on while we were talking about friends and women. A small passage went upstairs. Along some paths with spiders webbing their nets through the trees and along our path leading through a hole in a strange wall coming out of nowhere (wtf?) we came to a cliffhanger rock with a beautiful view out to the sea and over Manly Beach where we soon would end our walkway. After some pictures and one of the lizard joining in to our little breathtaking rest under this rock we went down to Shelly beach. It was so chilling here and not touristic, unlike Manly beach, so that we chilled a bit here in the sun. We went on back to Manly wharf and back on the vessel to Circular Quay (spoken [‘kie]). Sydney seemed to say “Good Bye” to us, while it seemed to look as good as it can get before our departure the next day. A magnifying picture shot from the vessel from the harbor bridge enlightened my heart. I was happy to leave, though I could only took the decision to travel hardly, because I didn’t know what to do with my stay here in Australia yet. Now I’m really happy that I joined Dennis n Fabi and didn’t took off to colder getting Melbourne with finding a job and staying long in mind. I still wanna work and stay for a bit longer, but not in Melbourne, but in Brisbane. Our trip would lead us to Brisbane!
Departure
So we took off today! Plan was to check in the morning if there was a cheap van to get for 8 days and if not take the train and stay in hostels. Next stop on our ~1000km trip to Brisbane would be Newcastle (500.000 citizens written in the Lonely Planet). It seemed we had a lack of luck cause not one van could be rented to us. It was Easter and every Backbacker AND every local Australian was on their way to Brisbane. A storekeeper of a carrent told us, that he had 41 vans standing in Brisbane and none anymore in Sydney. Only few could give us a high premiu camper for 150$ per day. That was very much, since we had seen offers for 45$ per day weeks before. So there was no travelling with a rented campervan. We went to Eva’s again planning to take the train and sleep in hostels, but our luck seemed to lack in great heavy drops so that no hostel in our destination Newcastle could pick us up. We were frustrated sitting at Eva’s again with thought in mind to check in here again, although having prepared to leave. We sat together, I was checking e-mails and we were about to check in again and go upstairs until a german guy came into the hostel. I had seen him before when he wanted to sell his car to an “Alan” who never came. He said in a low unconfident voice “does anybody want to buy a car?”. He was merely attended and only few looked up and he was about to leave. But held him up from leaving and called us to our table. He had lowered his car offer from 2800$ to 2000$ (4days ago) to 1500$ (2days ago) and now to 500 bucks, cause he was departing the next day by plane to Fiji Island. Fabi was suspicious and didn’t gave it a thought to buy it but I was hopeful and Dennis went with him to see in what state the car really was. It took long until he came back. When he did, he smiled and said “Wisster watt? Ick gloob ick koof det Ding jetzt!”. And so he did! It had everything we needed in time of our need and was even cheaper than every car rent you could have been offered. It was even a good deal, because Dennis could sell the car later when we were finished with our trip and get even a lot more out of it than he paid. It was really a last second save for us and we were all excited and curious now. That guy drove the car in front of Eva’s and we gazed at it. It was a Holden (name of Opel here in OZ) Commodore built in 1989, 3,8l V6 motor and unbreakable! That guy had driven 10000 km in 3 months with it and asked us for a last picture with his loved companion. He hugged the car by the full range of his arms and I took a picture from him with it. And in fact that car had everything it needed for a backpacker: two extra tanks of fuel, mechanical repair kit, cups, dishes, pots, pans, butane heater, soft mattresses in the back, a tent, sheets and pillows, an inflatable mattress, an inflater ^^ two big bottles of water, a surfboard, a solar shower, flying dragon kite and what is fully necessary for this trip and mustn’t be missed … a fishing rod xD
Immediately we took our stuff, stuffed it to the other stuff in the car and stuffed off … err took off :P
Fabi still couldn’t get over it and every 5 minutes he shook his head, laughed and said “I can’t believe I’m sitting in this car now” “I never had dared to buy this thing”. We all were very happy that we had made such a great deal by living the australian “no worries mate” attitude and were now on our trip to Brisbane over Newcastle, Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay.
Newcastle
As known as “One of the most beautiful cities on earth” in the Lonely Planet we expected it to be full of life and in motion. But when we arrived in the evening at about 9pm the city was dead! Not one a soul was out here in the streets. We drove through this ghost town to the YHA (Youth Hostel Australia - Jugendherberge), where a mutual friend of ours from Eva’s, Sascha, checked in. We took the chance to use the advantages of a hostel with bathrooms before we took off together with Sascha on foot to still our hunger and take a night walk in the city…if one could call it a city. There were weird sculptures in stores and scratched off flyers with only corners and edges left over on concrete in the harbour but no humans. We walked for a Subway but only saw a Girl behind glasses saying “no entry, we’ve already closed”, then further on to find a McD following my Smartphone with Google Maps. In fact we almost walked through half the city to find a small Domino’s Pizza Service near McD where we were offered a Tuesday’s special pizza price. In Fact there were people waiting there for their pizza. A skinny girl with stubby hair clothed in full black and a silent man in farmers clothing waiting on the bench with his head hung down. Every pupil I saw that evening looked like he could have been a murderer killing in series. We took the pizza and walked over the train rails where another gothic girl sat on the stairs glaring at us. From time to time a night active biker passed by with high speed and vanished as fast as he came again into the night. We came to the harbour leaving huge restaurants with empty chairs behind. There were wooden benches on which we wanted to have a seat and eat our pizzas until we noticed that the benches were hollow and that cockroaches lived in it. We decided for some benches made of concrete to have a seat on, but I was still worried that anywhere an insect could hide. Pizzas were tasty and while we ate, we watched some ships hovering over the water in the night. We thought the seamen could only be so bored of this city and work here that they were running a ship race…driving with almost 10km/h in Newcastle’s harbour! With filled bellies we walked on directed back to our car having in mind to camp at the beach. This town was so scary like in a horror movie, so that I imagined any zombie or vampire to creep out of a dark corner to hurl out its cleaves and take a deep gash into my flesh, but there were none. Instead we walked on by three (!) yes three wedding dress stores right side by side. Two cars drove past, the first ones growling something like “uaouahaouaouaoauh” and the second one with girls in it shouted “be my friend!” but no one of us knew to whom this was addressed to. We thought there really had to be very few men in this town… So anyway we fetched up our car at the YHA again and drove to the beach where we thought it to be a nice and lonely place to camp since it was not quite legal to camp at official parking places. It was our first night with this car on this trip, Fabi n Dennis in the car and me in the tent after some awful work of preparing the sleeping places by hurling all stuff in the car from back to front and building up the tent in the darkness. I like sleeping in a tent, cause it’s so near to the nature! :)
…I slept quite good and long, somehow too long. The few cars we had seen the last evening were making a big noise now with motors running and people babbling. I opened the tent and realized, that the whole parking place was full of cars and people, school classes coming across the greens across our place to the beach. Somehow the place filled with grandpa surfers, little children from school classes and other people who wanted to visit the beach on a workday in the morning…and we in midst of all of this!
Fortunately the city was not so scary and even nice in daylight. We walked around, took some pictures of worthy sightseeings, talked to some boring german girls and left Newcastle behind. Did you know that Newcastle has the biggest export haven of coal in the world? And did you know that Newcastle is exporting sand to Hawaii? Weird mate! Oo xD
Comments
Hey Chris!
Thank you so much for sharing your travel stories! I love to read them! And you can´t imagine the impression on my face when I read about the car - sooooo awesome!!!!!!! ^^ I wish you all the best - and have fun! This is a once in a lifetime experience! Make the most of it!
:-)
Yea that's what i wanted to say too. Or like HoN-Players would say: 'Cool story bro!' (NUR ICH kann das sagen! xD). Enjoy the time u having there! This time is unique in your life and it looks so awesome even though we can only see the pics. Keep going, be brave and live the Australian way of 'passt schon' :D
Und hier eine kleine Anekdote aus Hamburg: http://img01.lachschon.de/images/128281_YUNOTRY_1.jpg xD Nach welches Fach Chris? xD
xD Thermoooooooo *würg* Innere Energie omg ^^
Big Thanks Mark and Eva :-)))))
Frohe Ostern wünschen dir deine Steffi, deine Mum und dein Bro!
----> http://www.picfront.org/d/8Bgl <----
PS: Steffi schickt ganz viele Küsschen und Knuddler mit! Von mir kriegst du aber nur nen herzhaften Handshake mein Lieber und Mama schickt nen Ich-bin-Stolz-auf-dich-mein-Sohn-aber-nicht-in-Fremde-Autos-einsteigen mit! Frohe Ostern! ^.^
:DDDDDDDD VIeeeeeeeeleeen Dank ^-^ hab ich jetzt erst gesehen :o so lieb
von euch! :)))))) Und der Mark lächelt sogar! unbelieeeevable ^^ das ist ne
Seltenheit auf Bildern. Aber ist ja klar mit meiner Süßen Steffi im Arm kann man
gar nicht anders als lächeln ;D Und Mom hat bestimmt die ganzen leckeren
Schokohasen zurecht gemacht, so sorgsam wie sie ist :D viiiiieeeeelen Dank ^-^