Backpacker

Australia is backpacker’s paradise. We never came across any other country, which has such a strong focus on (young) backpackers. The whole tourism industry is to please people with a low budget. There are hostels everywhere which offer for little money a place to sleep, often in a dormant. Moreover, there are community rooms, kitchens and often community bathrooms in those hostels as well as on the beaches for the public.

We stay mostly on campgrounds. They are fully equipped as well and we mainly stay in big chains like Top Tourist Parks and Big 4.

There are showers, community kitchens in which you cook, do your dishes and you store your food in the community fridge. This is a great experience for travelers. However on the other side there are some disadvantages as well. For the low budget tourist everything needs to be cheap thus the quality suffers. Bars offer great live acts for free. The wine or prosecco is cheap, however tastes awful. That is why you need to drink beer. Btw: ‘ForEx’ (actually XXXX) or ‘VeeBee’ (Victoria Bitter) what most people drink here.

Moreover, you don’t find a table and bench at the campground as they have the community kitchen equipped with them. Well, we miss a big table as we were used to having one in Africa and America. Of course we have now our own chairs and a little table. In addition to this the standard of hygiene in the community kitchen is a big disadvantage. Depending on who is there and how many people share a kitchen it does suffer. However, even here we have found a solution. We brought with us our foldable kitchen sink. Thus we can cook and do the dishes on our own little campground area. Sometimes this is the best alternative. Just recently, in Townsville, Michaela wanted to cook some water for her tea. As always she took the pot for cooking the water in and removed the old water, which was in it. Well, it was not only water in there. A dead frog, which already turned blue and pink, came out of the pot as well. We don’t know how long the frog was in there. How often it was boiled and actually we don’t want to know. Well, Michaela did not have any tea that night after all.

Down Under

It took us a whole week to adjust to Australia. The jet lag was pretty bad (well, as it is known it is always harder when you travel east).

Generally the adjustment took longer than in Africa or USA where we have been before. At first glance Australia is similar to the USA. Brisbane is a big city which could be in any other country. There is a beautiful river with a nice bridge, hundreds of coffee shops and bars and of course all the big brands which exist everywhere on the globe (A as in Adidas and Z as in Zeiss). We enjoyed having a Starbucks around the corner and we also tried the Australian equivalent called Coffee Shop.

The supermarkets are called Coles or Woolworth (same brand as the German clothes shop) and they offer the same products as at home.

The only difference is that everything seems to be made in Australia (even Kraft Parmesan). This might be connected with the strict import laws. Australia is very conscious of what they get into their continent so that nothing affects their sensitive ecosystem (thus no harm is done for people, animals and plants).

Besides that one drives on the left side which is nothing we have to worry about since we lived in Ireland. However, so far we did not get used to the many dead kangaroos next to the street. Seems there is no real protection for them (kangaroos overall seems to be a plague) thus we only saw 4 live ones so far… The days start early – sun gets up around 5am. Then the birds start sing or better to say shout to all other birds in Australia and around the globe that a new day starts and that they are awake. No doubts that if you camp in a tent you get up latest at 6 am. At 6 pm the sun goes down and at 22 pm you fall asleep. Thus you get enough sleep after we had figured out how it works…. Well, moreover we had to find out how big Australia is – it is really big. We thought we are used to long distances after having been to USA. However, for Australia we still have no clue about the distances (Germany would fit 22 times into Australia).

By size Australia is smaller than the USA (Germany would fit into Australia 28 times), however only 28 million people live here (2.8 inhabitants per square kilometer. In comparison in the USA there are over 300 million Americans (31 inhabitants per square kilometers, still far less than in Germany where it is 230 inhabitants per square kilometer). We were already impressed with the endlessness of the USA and the huge areas where no one seems to live in, however Australia is by far more extreme. There are only 4 bigger cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. Therefore any settlement with over 10.000 people is already a local metropolitan area and a highlight for the traveler who has seen nothing for the last hundreds of kilometers on the Australian highway…..