The Super Koala

On our way back from Adelaide, we pass one of the Ozzie ‘big things’: a 20 meter high Koala with a souvenir shop in its belly. These 'big things' are an Australian wide obsession – Annet thinks they are absolutely ridiculous, Peter laughs his head off and the Australians take them very seriously (honest). There are quite a few throughout the country. From the collection 'big' we have seen: the big shrimp, the huge banana, the gigantic Ned Kelly (legendary hero / bandit here), the recently moved (news item) enormous sheep. We still have a couple to go, one of which is the mega potato (also known as giant turt).

In between al this travelling, we now spend most of our time finding work and a place to live. Our teardrop is a little stretched now as it also has to fulfill a task as an office (it is already bedroom, kitchen, dining and lounge). 2 square metres snotmuch. So at the moment it feels a bit 'roofless'. The rental market is not huge, so it takes a lot of effort to find anything at all.

It's a long weekend again and we treat ourselves to a flight to Naracoorte. Reasonably long flight (550km) over the impressive Grampians. We've seen these mountains on our way to Adelaide as well, very nice indeed. On our way we stop to stretch the legs a bit on an airfield with a crew of 1. This local mechanic / pump assistant gives us a cupper in the hanger. We fill up and away we are. Eventually at Naracoorte Peter makes one of his by now famous crosswind landings. It is actually storming. The friendly pump assistant takes us to our motel. We couldn't remember which one we booked but he did! The perfect wireless internet in our room is a real bonus.

Pictures to follow (of course we travel light and didn't take the download cable for the camera with us, although we did take the laptop...)

Pinnokio

Our next flightplan was to Bendigo. And guess what, it fully went as scheduled. Effortless flight, cab into nice little town, had a good lunch and flew back in the evening. We were fully charged up now to fly to Adelaide. Turned out there was a V8 Supercar race there too, all well. The weather over here is always good except when we're ready to fly out of course: rain and storm was predicted so we, as usual, change our plan completely and decide to 'cruise' in our car to Adelaide. Just 750km down the road. Because of the race everything was fully booked and we ended up on a campsite in Handorf, indeed a very (!) German oriented village in the Adelaide Hills. We meet our German neighbours at the camping in the evening in the village (where we of course have a schnitzel for diner) and hang out till the early hours. Turned out we ended up in the local disco where we spot a chap dressed up (we think) in lederhosen and a hat who came in 'um ein Bier zu trinken’. When he approaches us, our German neighbours straight away understood he is a carpenter looking for work. We thought Pinokkio was out for a night in town. We couldn't get him to lie by the way.....

Next day we really go into Adelaide. Mike (a former colleague from Zytek) arranges pits-passes for us for the V8 Supercar race. It's hard to follow for us but the atmosphere is electric. Just before the race of course an airshow. The rules are different here apparently and the jets perform low fly-overs: Annet's not too pleased with this - Peter takes pictures of course. Anyway what is clear is that the cars are either Holdens or Fords. Late that night we spot a Holden fan pissing against a Ford (well at least then we knew how won).

And of course we had pie-floater because if you don't you've not been in Adelaide! We were both charmed by Adelaide and surroundings straight away again (like we were years ago). But perhaps there's not too much to do normally (except for carpenters dressed up as Pinokkio of course).

Roofless

This picture has got nothing to do with the subject whatsoever but Peter decided to publish it to proof we are actually in Australia... This was by the way the (monotonic red straight long) way to a bush-camping. We turned around on arrival because Annet got scared at the sight of the 'campsite' alone.

Milbun is great! part 2

We decide to go to the beach for a long weekend as the weather forecast is 40C. A large lunch on a terrace at the beach is served by a friendly Belgian waitress. Everyone one and his cat has decided the same as us and it's really hard to find a campsite. At last we got the local Ranger to assign us a fantastic spot: just enough shade to survive and the dining / drinking scene at walking distance. Spot on. Of course we end up with a bottle of wine a fish and chips late that night just outside our teardrop...

The Ozzies have a sandcastle competition each year over here: very impressive works of art!

Next evening we hang out till late at the beach with a few youngsters from Melbourne. We were invited cause Annet mentioned she plays music as well (which is what they were doing). She grabs a tamborin straight away and decides to leave it untouched for 3 hours. We were rewarded with a beer (not tight down to a tree by the way. A bit rough (but still clocking 16 minutes between waking up and driving off) we leave the next day for Melbourne. On our way we spot the best breakfast joint on Victoria where we have a fantastic breakfast sandwich (sounds dull, but hey it was executed to perfection!)

Philip Island

Our first real flight-plan is to fly out and land on the beach. Plan sounds allright but alas, the landing strip is too short and we back out. So we decide to fly to Philip Island, just outside the coast of Melbourne Nice flight and we already learn to navigate the Ozzie way - helped by our GPS as back-up of course. We've now got all the local aeronautical maps and the route is easy to follow. Surely that will change on our longer flights because of the dreaded 'featureless landscape'; lots of nothing really. Again it's a bit windy and also from the wrong side: crosswind on the runway. The runway is gravel as well which means it's easy to slide off. And of course at the end there's a cliff... How exciting. It takes 3 attempts to land but we're fine. The local crew appreciates it.

Perhaps a bit too exciting but a really good scenery flying over the Island and it's cliffs.