The Road Trip in NT & WA

So, I still can’t let loose of Melbourne, I am captured and entangled by the city and its beauty. There’s so much to explore and to do here. You would probably need a whole year to see it all.

I have joined a “booze makes history better tour”, where a guide takes you to different bars and pubs and you drink and talk. 🙂 I met a nice guy from London there, Matt, and with him I explored another roof top and one hidden bar after the end of the tour. It was really nice.

I also took a ride on the heritage Circle Tram and completed the whole tour, about one hour ride through Melbourne.

The Bourke Street Mall in the CBD has all the shopping and the big department stores and brands. There are a lot of very cool heritage buildings on this street (e.g. in the Art Deco style). The H&M flagship store which is located there is probably one of the most beautiful stores in the world thanks to the heritage building it occupies.

See the photos for more impressions from Melbourne.

I am still enjoying Melbourne a lot – it is definitely a really great place and it has just been awarded again the world’s most liveable city by The Economist for the seventh year running.

On a free walking tour I met some really nice guys from Spain, Belgium and France and we were hanging out the last days together a lot. The nights were long and we enjoyed a lot of beer and goon (Australia’s cheap wine). On Saturday there were the finals of the AFL (the Australian Football League, they also call it just Footy). The Adelaide Crows played versus Richmond Tigers. We watched the game on the big screen on Federation Square. Most fans were for the Tigers and as they won the match the atmosphere was really good. We went to some pubs after the match, with the last one having a dancefloor upstairs, were we ended the evening.

I also went to visit Mornington Peninsula some days ago, as my AirBnB host Jacqueline was so nice to give me a lift to the place which is about 1,5 hours away from Melbourne CBD – she works there and drives there every day.
It is a really laid-back place with some nice beaches and they have the famous colorful beach boxes on the beach.

Yesterday I went to St. Kilda again, exploring the cool street art and also the Luna Park amusement park. It is over hundred years old and it has some really nice old wooden rollercoaster, which I needed to ride, of course! It was really fun. It was rattling and clattering and it had some nice ups and downs. For 100 years old, definitely cool.

I arrived in Melbourne at 8 pm. I took the Skybus to the CBD, another shuttle bus dropped me off the hostel Urban Accomodation in Southbank. Now I had the hostel / backpacker feeling again – which I hadn’t had for a long time. 🙂
In general the hostel was not too bad and quite clean. I even met a nice girl from Hungary, we enjoyed breakfast and dinner (pasta with tomato sauce) together and also spent one day walking around in St. Kilda, the famous beachside of Melbourne. The Yarra River and the Crown Casino were really close and even the CBD was within easy walking distance. Being in the Crown Casino makes you feel like being in Las Vegas.

The first days I spent mainly walking around the greater CBD area and exploring the famous laneways of Melbourne. A walk to the famous and very impressive Shrine of Remembrance was also included.

After four nights I changed my accomodation and moved into an AirBnB in Princes Hill not too far from Lygon Street and Melbourne Uni. From there I explored the University and the surroundings again. I recognised a lot of places again from my time in Melbourne in 2010 when I had attended a Summer Film School at the Melbourne Uni.

A visit to the ACMI, the film museum of Melbourne, was of course mandatory, too. Really one of the best museums if you’re interested in film. There is so much so see and explore from technical equipment to trivia and facts about famous movies. And a lot of gear can actually be tried out. The have a lot of really old school computer and arcade video games from the 80’s & 90’s and you can just grab the controller and give it a try. That was really fun!
Another cool thing is the replica of the original car from the Mad Max movie.

And last but not least they still have the Matrix camera installation they already had eight years ago. Within a cubicle there are quite a number of cameras installed and distributed over 360 degrees. You push a button and after the third tone you make a crazy jump or move. A short video is recorded which you can see on a screen outside the cubicle and you can even email the link to you. Unfortunately the format is Flash which is a bit outdated.

Barefoot Kuata was really nice, too! They even had a pool (actually it was three small ones) next to the beach. It was really cool to use a hammock between two palm trees and swinging over some rocks with the beach and sea just below you.

In the evening I went for a night snorkel with a guide from the dive team. We had a torch so you could actually see something under water in the dark. There were not that many fish as during daytime, as many of them sleep between the corals (you could actually see them there). We saw two really big fish – one was grey the other really colorful and with thorns all over his back. We also saw some really big shells, you could see one of them breathing. Another cool thing was a spider crab – it really looked like a hybrid of a spider and a crab. I reef shark also passed by to say hello.

Next day I went for a walk to the summit of the island, about an hour return walk. It had an steep ascent and it was already pretty hot in the late morning. The views from the top were really great.

On the Yasawa Flyer which took me back to Nadi, I met one of the british girls from the first island again. And also the nice German couple Manuel and Justine from Germany which I was hanging out a lot on Barefoot Manta.

Lucky for the German couple they actually went snorkeling with the Mantas on the day I had already left to Barefoot Kuata. They said it was really cool, they also showed me an awesome video they had taken of it. But well, you can’t have it all. 😉

After four days I took the Yasawa Flyer (the cruise ship) to my second island with the Barefoot Manta Resort. This place here is just awesome. The whole complex is so nice with many palm trees and plants everywhere, nice bamboo style bures and the beach and the water – crystal blue – are just great. Going snorkeling here is just fun, you see plenty of colorful fishes and corals.
The food is amazing, the staff are really friendly and I met some nice other travellers, too.

There are always some fun activities on schedule like playing beach volleyball with the locals (they play really well) or a crab race (I actually won with my crab number nine, the prize was a cold Fiji Gold beer). 

As I really liked Fiji I decided to change my flight back and extended my stay for another three nights. Luckily I hadn’t booked the flight online but via a travel agency in Sydney. I contacted the guy via email and he helped me quite quick to change my flight – of course additional costs occured.

I spent one more night in Barefoot Manta, another in Barefoot Kuata (to see another island) and the last one near the airport in Nadi.

When I went Snorkeling again on the last day on Manta I took an underwater action cam wich I had borrowed from the dive center. I even saw a little sting ray wich blue spots on his back. Unfortunately I couldn’t get close enough to take a good picture – I swam after him but he was really quick. After a little drop behind some corals he had just vanished.

I did some nice walk along the board walk that starts at Luna Park and turning right at the end leads you to a nice little secret garden. I even saw a Kookaburra in the park.

Above the garden you had a great view on the Sydney skyline and the Harbour Bridge.

The Sydney Tram Museum was on the agenda today. You could browse through a nice collecation of trams from Australia and even some models from other countries were in their collection. They even had two trams from Germany on display – one from Berlin and one from Munich.

You could also take a ride in one of their old trams to the nearby Royal National Park where I took a short walk.

I enjoyed some time at one of Sydney’s nicest beaches – Manley Beach. It was not really “sunbathing in yourswimming trunks” weather, but with a jeans and t-shirt it was really nice in the sun.

I took the ferry to the Taronga Zoo, which is perfectly located on a hill across the harbour and Sydney CBD. It is one of the most beautiful zoo’s I’ve been to. Upon arrival you take a gondola to the top of the hill and then you walk your way down to the exit. They have plenty of animals from various parts of the world. The giraffes’ enclosure with the Sydney skyline in the background is probably one of the highlights as well as the bird show with a similar spectacular view and different species of birds flying into the arena while lovely music is being played.

In the evening I went to the Royal Botanic Gardens, near Mrs Macquaries Chairs, to take some photos of the Sydney skyline at night.