Bendigo-Sydney ~1360 km

From Bendigo I went on to Echuca, where I stayed the night near the river just in town area and next day after exchanging a book in library and having some free internet went to juggle a little. Next destination was Wodonga-Albury twin town located on Victoria and New South Wales state border. As I was leaving Albury I got stuck without a lift in the evening. That night I camped under a bridge inbetween a motorway and railway. So noises from both sides and from above xD But that’s just normal. What was not normal it’s the storm through the night. The wind broke small one pole of the tent, so it was flattened in my feet area. Luckily I was under a bridge so this didn’t force me to sleep in wet conditions. Next day I hitchhiked to Wagga Wagga, where I visited a couple of camping stores and got spare parts to fix the pole. Although I didn’t have to use it that day as during the last ride, which brought me to Tumut town I ended up staying at the driver’s place.

Even though I was going to Canberra now and it wasn’t all that far, shortest road there would be all mud and not really accessible in this time of the year with all the floods happening in these parts of Australia. I even missed one just by 2 days (supposedly a place I’ve been through was flooded up to ~1 meter high in water Another sort of disaster I was informed of was a ~7 point earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. Place I was now thinking of going to of from Sydney. Anyway, as I couldn’t go to Canberra through that straight dirt road, I had to make an enormous hook going down to Cooma across Snowy Mountains, which by the way still had some snow even for an Australian Spring. From Cooma I turned back north and this time to Canberra. There I just had long walk around the city lake and town center. After spending some hours on free internet in the library I walked of in the direction of Queanbeyan. I was picked up on the way and dropped off at some nice spot to camp. Thing is I was picked up by the same car next morning as I walked out of the forrest So this way I ended up in Queanbeyan. Did nothing much there apart again some internet time – got hooked on this library thing here in Australia now

Unluckily as I hitchhiked off from Queanbeyan next day to Batemans Bay I discovered that I lost my tent pole that I fixed and carried just fastened to my backpack because of it being in larger packed size :\ So I had to get some new stuff, which I did at Batemans Bay, where I spent two days. I left that place for Wollongong. There I spent some time at the beach, but my head started to ache as I was doing that. That turned into some nasty headache for the rest of the day. I walked quite a bit from Wollongong in search for a place to spend the night, but urban area was just unending… Finally though I did found some spot at charcoal storage area along the road with some suitable grass space there. As I got up next morning I was perfectly well again and walked another 5 km until I found a spot more or less suitable for hitchhiking. As I got a lift I was invited for some tea in Campbell town. Even got to use a shower there Next ride was to Liverpool with Tonganese driver, who even payed for a ride on a train to Sydney from that town ^^ Well, lucky day it is. In Sydney I just wandered around in town for a bit and visited Royal Botanic Gardens as well as Macquarie’s Chair point considered as a best spot for viewing Sydney Opera House. As I left that place and wandered of I spoted a library in the city – some time on wireless and the making up of this blog post

This is pretty much it for my travelling in Australia, which was a big pleasure and a fantastic experience, which is probably not gonna be equalled anywhere else or so I think. Even though hitchhiking here can sometimes be troublesome with noone picking you up for 5-6 hours (happened 3 or 4 times to me) in general it’s an enjoyable thing to do in this country as there are heaps of other travelers from all around the globe. So meeting same-minded fellows is quite common. Geography and a landscape are unique to this country in a lot of places and a lot of places have some adequates in all the other destinations in the world, that some tourists flock to. One can only be jealous of living in as a big a country as Australia and having this much of opportunity to travel just in one place. Them having all those visitor information centers in most of the towns is a huge help for traveler too. I after all didn’t know much about what I would be visiting here before I actually got to Australia. All those brochures and helpful staff in those centers was a considerable asset to my traveling here. All in all – this was fantastic. Moving on to New Zealand shortly after this…

Or so I thought. They apparently don’t agree much with one way traveling and require a return or ongoing ticket from the country of destination. Here goes my plan to hitchhike on sailboats then  And the more or less ‘cheap’ flight from New Zealand to Los Angeles in USA is with American Airlines, which - as I discovered after a long search in Sydney - had their office shut down :\ Well I’ll manage somehow. In the worst situation, if booking online not gonna go well as it didn’t previously, I’ll just go for a return ticket to Australia. Maybe even gonna revisit Australia for what I miss on during this visit, if I won’t succeed with sailboats that is o_O

Here’s some statistics again:
Land distance covered ~ 39140 km
Water distance covered ~ 280 km
Air distance covered ~ 4700 km
… so I did once over the globe in distance now
Vehicles used – 580
Days spent – 198
Books read – 15

Photo: click