Bendigo-Sydney ~1360 km 2010/09/12

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 

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

Port Wakefield-Bendigo ~1460 km 2010/09/01

Next day of my stay at Ruel’s place we went to this Barossa Valley famous for it’s wineries. That was quite fun even though I never was interested in wine at all. A few of Ruel’s friends, also guys from Philippines went along. After another go at interentet until late at night and morning breakfast Ruel got me a lift just outside Port Wakefield and I instantly got a lift further. Not all the way to Adelaide though. Had to walk a few kilometers just to get in the city across the subburbs. In Adelaide I did a bit of juggling. Nothing impressive compared to small towns. At least I met this way a couple of Russians, so got to chat in that language after a long while 🙂 Walking out of Adelaide was difficult again because of the city scale and because of the road going uphill for a long time. I ended up on a freeway anyway. And I wasn’t supposed to be by the law. So next day I got a lift by police. No dramas. Just got to this little Stirling town and continued on with small rides inbetween small towns. Nice change of pace anyway. Had another ride there to a free camping area with a woman working at information center, so got helped by her this way. She even drove to information center and got me a bunch of brochures so I wouldn’t go uninformed further on about the nice stuff around. That’s how I was settled for going on by this “Great Ocean Road” 🙂 One disturbing thing while we rode to that free camping area is a road accident with a dead dog we witnessed just before our eyes. Quite nasty. On par with that cow operation thing I was witness before in WA.

I continued with my hitchhiking next day and got as far as Millicent and that’s it for the day. One more or less memorable thing was crossing of the river on cable ferry. Then next day I got to Mount Gambier town and went to see it’s Blue Lake, which supposedly becomes very deep blue on some days of November. It was actually a volcano crater lake, which surprised me since I didn’t think there were any volcanoes in Australia. Just as I was leaving the site a stong hailstorm began. Luckily I found a place to hide fast enough. Later it was a ride to Port MacDonnell, where I found myself on the road with almost no traffic for an hour. By the end of the day I did manage to get a ride on a better road and then just stayed the night in the bush nearby. Next day it was just hitchhiking to Warrnambool. Weather still was very windy with frequent short rains. Quite miserable, so no chance on juggling with those circumstances. Ended up camping outside the town. Next day proved to be much more successful in a lot of ways. Weather was much better. Less frequent rains and more sun, so I went and did juggling in the town center, which went really well there. I had to get permission for busking though. And when I went to city council for that I was asked to juggle for some office workers and got 5$ and invited by manager Murray over a dinner after I would finish my juggling on the street 😀 So that evening I got treated to some beers… and pizza… while having a chat with Murray, his wife and collegues at this Bojangles restaurant and later at a pub while watching a match of Australian football. Finally learned something about that sport then thanks to Murray explaining the rules. A nice bit of culture insight 🙂 And then I ended up staying the night at his place. Unexpected would be the right word to describe the day. Well, that’s the thing about hitchhiking and juggling – you meet some nice and interesting people 🙂

Next day with Murray we went visiting some places in Warrnambool. Mainly shore sites, wavebreaker, rivermouths, rock islands offshore. Murray was very generous in his desire to help me on my trip and bought an adaptor for my European mobile charger and later even hiking boots as my own were torn in at least 7 places at that time and not so waterproof anymore. We agreed that I would symbolically repay with getting beers for that day’s evening 😀 Fantastic. Before getting back to Murray’s home we went to see Hopkins Falls as well – not too clean water looking waterfall. That day I also got some time to use internet and wash some stuff as well. Not speaking of delicious fish dish for dinner 😀 After another night I was dropped of at the turn off to Great Ocean Road, which I keep on following. On my way then I saw “London Bridge” and “Twelve Apostles” – all just some spectacular looking sand rock islands near shore along that road.

After a night near Apolo Bay I was zig-zaging my way to Erskine Falls near Lorne town. Waterfall was about 30 meters high. Getting to and from it was through this steep 1km hill road. Made me sweat a bit 😀 With a couple of rides I got to the premises of Geelong and on the next day had a looong walk into and out of that city. Forgot my notebook (paper one) while in internet cafe. And only found out that when I got to Ballarat ~90 km away. Didn’t bother with getting back. Weather meanwhile got quite miserable again – some weak, but constant rain and wind. With some 5 rides next day I managed to get to Bendigo, where I went to city library and wrote this post on their computer there. Before I would constantly be forgeting they have it for free in the libraries.

 Photo: click