1850 km – 2 Weeks – 5 Friends – 1 Van _#1

Yes :)! That’s the trip. Five friends traveling around 1850 km from Brisbane to Cairns in a camerpvan. The van was our home and vehicle for two weeks.

All of us met during our study abroad at the University of Newcastle in Australia. We traveled before, for example to Melbourne during our Easter break.

We started the trip in Brisbane because there is not too much between Newy and Brisbane worth traveling. We skipped that part and flew from Newcastle to Brisbane. You should never underestimate distances in Australia. Europe and Australia are similar in their size. Our route of around 1850 km is similar to the route from Porto/Portugal to Brugge/Belgium in Europe.

AND YEAH… Newcastle has an airport. I did not know about that until I actually arrived in Newcastle. The airport is tiny. Once you check in and are ready to go to the airplane, you actually walk out of the building. Next thing you see are the airplanes and signs which indicate their destination.  It rather seems like a bus stop.

Brisbane

  1. – 21. June 2013

We stayed three days in Brisbane in a hostel. Brisbane was not too exciting for us. Three days were more than enough. After traveling to Sydney and Melbourne, Brisbane seemed rather boring to us.

What did we do?

We went to the Botanic Garden. Which is quite impressive. One of my fAfrican sausage treeriends IMG_3341cracked me up when she suddenly mentioned “There are Ikea plants everywhere!” :D. Australian plants are amazing!

 

We walked through the Casino. In contrast to many other countries, you can actually just walk in an Australian Casino without dressing up. It was fun to be there and shocking to see how many people lose thousands of dollars within minutes. Definitely worth a stop if you have not been to a Casino before.

 

ThSouth Bank Brisbanee South Bank is fun to walk through and rest. We had somethingIbis to eat while we were there… One of the ibises (picture on the right) was quick enough to get one of our slices of pizza. Be prepared to protect your food ;).

 

The city has great museums. Some of them are free. It is definetly worth a stop to get a better insight of Australian history. The museums are very modern. Their occurrence makes it even more fun and interesting to walk through.

 

Church BrisbaneOur hostel was not directly in the city center. Our location was great becausehostel it made us walk through some other parts of  the city except its center.

 

 

 

koala house

 

On the 21st we picked up our van. May the fun begin. Before heading north we went down south. Next stop: Surfers Paradise.

 

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