Wow is he still alive?? Are you all surprised? I have to admit that its getting harder every time to keep up a blog on the internet. Even my travel diary hasnt been written in a long time. Finally today I have heaps of spare time waiting for my next flight, only 8 hours...

In my last blog I told something about having a new girlfriend, Jasmin. At the moment we are still together but unfortunately Jasmin has to stay behind in Melbourne. The people following my messages on facebook probably have noticed that Jasmin got robbed 4000 dollars just before we were going to buy a car. The police couldn't do anything but luckily her insurance covered the theft by 80 euros...

After 9 months working at the Honda Shop in Perth I got pretty bored of getting into that 8 to 5 ritual so we (Jasmin and me) decided to go traveling together. Unfortunately we couldn't go together on the motorbike so I left that at the Shop for them to sell. We bought a big 4x4 so we could do some off road travelling too. Before we left I gave the car a big service, as I have learnt a lot working in a motorbike shop. To make sleeping a bit nicer I also built a double mattress into the back of the car. We were all ready to go.

First we travelled South to see the migrating of the big humpback whales, we saw dozens! Some of them were so close that it was possible to swim to them. We never bothered trying because the water was freezing cold. We both had enough of the cold weather so we decided to go North to the warmth, going straight through the desert. We saw a lot of nothing but also many aboriginal communities in the middle of nowhere. Again many of them in poor condition, street dogs everywhere and drunk aborigines on the street.

All the way up north I wanted to do the famous Gibbs river road, as I couldn't do this before in my first car. People were warning us to take at least 2 spare tires because it was going to be very very rough. This made me a bit nervous, because we 'only' had one. Going over the track we had a big laugh because we have had so many worse tracks, this one was a JOKE! Thats how easy it was! Along the track were many beautiful places. The one I will never forget is the big river going underground in a huge tunnel and it comes out at the other side of the mountain. During this walk we also found a snake skin on the floor, it was over 3 meters long which worried Jasmin 'a bit'.

Coming down from the north we passed Alice Springs like 5 times doing loops around the Macdonnel Ranges. This is like a spine of mountains going through the heart of the desert. Nearby was also the palm valley where you can see, yes palm trees 800 km away from the coast.

Further down south we visited Kangaroo Island where one of my colleagues owned a private piece of land where we stayed for a while. Unfortunately the weather was terrible but we still had a nice time taking a break in our road trip.

Going to Melbourne we passed the famous 'Great Ocean Road', which we also had to see in the rain. We saw many better places that were not as touristic so we were not impressed at all. Its easy to get used to the Australian beauty.

Now that we were in Melbourne, I wanted to visit Lindsay and the berry farm where I worked 2 years ago. The farm was still running and Lindsay was more than happy to see us, but my time was running out so we couldn't stay longer than an aussie lunch. I had to leave the country on 12 November (today), and I still had to sell the car and book the tickets.

In a rush I booked ticket to Papua New Guinea, thinking it would be similar to Indonesia. After doing some research I noticed that the only way out of papua new guinea is going back to Australia or paying over 2000 dollars for a plane ticket. Next thing I notice is the travel advice, to be extreme cautious for a whole list of places and things not to do... To make it a little bit worse, the country relies totally on imported products, making it more expansive than Australia. O boy...

So I have to admit that this research made me a bit nervous, but having previous experience in similar countries like India gives me a little more comfort. I guess Ill have to go and see for myself. Ill be there until 12 december, as Im heading back to Melbourne to pick up Jasmin and then head to bali in Indonesia. Wish me luck ;)