Downunder 2002/03

Here are a few more pics from our trip to Australia in 2002/2003:

This is beautiful Wineglass-Bay on Tasmania from above:

The shallow waters of Wineglass-Bay up close:

The south-coast of Australia just below Sydney - would you have guessed this is Australia, too?:

How about that for a contrast (Flinders Ranges / Wilpena Pound):

Road Train Blues

Just a few weeks ago when I was talking to a good friend about our trip to Australia, I was astonished to hear that he didnt know the meaning of the expression "road train". I found a few pictures that illustrate it nicely, I guess:

[as always: click on the images for a bigger version]

It might be evident that overtaking these monsters on an unsealed outback road leaves you with a good chance of dying a quick death as you see absolutely nothing in the dust and the whole overtaking process takes a bit longer than with that standard truck on your average Autobahn... ;)

Apart from that, road trains usually stop for nothing (try to brake with 4-5 heavy trailers behind you :), which is why they have huge steel bars mounted to their front, simply pushing everything away that might have decided to take a nap on the outback roads - kangaroos, emus, camels - you name it. So its pretty obvious that road-trains are responsible for a huge amount of the roadkill on outback roads.

Picture Test

Just testing pictures... test ... test.



... yep, works

Just click the picture to see a bigger version in a separate window

The picture was taken during our first OzExperience[TM] 2002/2003 on the beautiful Kangaroo Island (the name says it all ;)

Intro (4 weeks to go)

Gday all!

Just four weeks to go until our next OzExperience[TM] - time to set up a temporary blog to document all the things we are about to encounter in Australia. This blog will serve as our primary place for sharing information about our tour until I have enough time to set up a "true" blog with MovableType (not before 2005, I guess).

I suppose many of you have never encountered a blog before and are a bit irritated by the phrase. "Blog" is short for "Web-Log" - meaning a web-based diary that you can update from all over the world with whatever you want to. Maintaining a Blog has become very popular during the last few years and there are a number of famous blogs around. Some of these include the blog by a young Iraqi living in Bagdad, who kept his readers up to date during the american(-led) war against Iraq. Another interesting blog is the one by Wil Wheaton, which most of you might remember as "Wesley Crusher" - the brainy young ensign from Star Trek / Next Generation. He turned into a writer recently and reflects on his "post-Hollywood"-life in a very honest, interesting and funny way. He rarely comments on Star-Trek stuff, rather discussing politics, computer stuff and life in general - so its safe to surf even if you are not into ST. On the other hand he is a geek like me - so beware ;)

Our updates might flip-flop between english and german - depending on mood, rhetoric skills, state of tiredness and whatnot. If you are unable to identify the language, I was possibly drunk (which will not happen often, as Australia has not yet encountered the invention of the Weizenbier :). I will try to include pictures with the updates as often as possible, though that depends on my ability to ftp the pics to my other site.

During our tour I will write the updates on a PDA, uploading them whenever we have a wireless LAN hotspot around (which might take a while when we traverse the outback, as we will be happy to find a dunny (a bush toilet) there, let alone a WLAN hotspot) ;)

I will post more information on our planned route during my next updates.

Ralf