15:14 Sun.

10 Sep, 2017

Back to civilisation

Brisbane

Tags: Brisbane, Civilisation, dingos

Brisbane , Australia

15 °C

Clear

5:51 am

5:39 pm

So after about 12 days of backpacking through hostels, boats and wilderness we have finally arrived to Brisbane. The last big city of the east coast.

In the last week we have spent hunting for dingos on a deserted island about quarter of Slovenia in size. There are no roads on the island so we spent most of the time traversing on a 4x4s, one of which I was lucky enough to drive.

We actually were lucky enough to see couple of wild dingos, not nearly as many as the guides made us believe we will encounter beforehand. It still impressive we saw some, its like running into wild wolves in Slovenia.

Wild dingos on Fraser island. Watching them from a safety of a car.

Now we have two cool things planned for tomorrow and Tuesday in Brisbane and on Wednesday we move to the Gold coast for two days before returning back to Sydney. Sadly our trip is coming to an end.

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Thus says Jani Bizjak

12:15 Mon.

4 Sep, 2017

Sailing

The great barrier reef

Tags: Coral reef, sailing, whale

Airlie Beach , Australia

20 °C

Mostly Cloudy

6:11 am

5:57 pm

We have just arrived from a 3 day sailing trip around the coral reef near Airline Beach.

We spent 3 days on this boat with 14 other young people. We split the time between snorkeling and sailing along the islands.

It was loads of fun, we have seen everything from small fishes to stingrays, sharks and even a gigantic humpback whale with a baby.

Mother teaching a baby how to jump from water. She must have been more than 10m long, larger than our boat.

Now we are staying in a hostel and tomorrow we’ll continue to the Freiser island, another 1000 kilometers to the south. We are going to spend about 5 days there, looking for dingos and learning to surf after that we have something really cool planed in the Brisbane.

Since I’m writing this from a phone I’m going to keep it short. It’s incredibly hard to edit or even add photos to the posts from it. I’ll come back to these topics when I ger to computer, probably not sooner than in Slovenia.

Ah yea almost forgot, I also managed to caught a cold, which is incredibly annoying for snorkeling, also I’m blowing through tissue like no tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get better before Brisbane, since some of the activities require me not being sick.

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Thus says Jani Bizjak

16:18 Fri.

1 Sep, 2017

Let’s go swimming!

Ok, maybe not!

Tags: Crocodiles, gorge, rain, rain forest, snakes, trip

Cape Tribulation , Australia

21 °C

Mostly Cloudy

6:24 am

6:12 pm

On Tuesday afternoon we arrived to Cairns, far up north on the continent. On Tuesday we had a chance to walk about the city, since it was not safe to swim. How come? Well there are some animals swimming around that want to eat you.

On Wednesday we gor up early in the mornings in order to go on a whole day tour even further up north into a ancient rainforest. It is suppose to be the oldest forest on Earth, dating back as far as 120 million years.

After driving for a couple of hours we arrived to the Daintree river which marks the border of civilization. On the other side there is no electricity, no phone signal, no nothing.

We crossed the river in a levi and drove some more on the other side. There we took a walk through the forest looking at the ancient flora and trying to spot some of the animals. Most of them were extremely well camouflaged, even after guide pointed his finger 2 cm away from them it was almost impossible to see them. After the walk we had a lunch on a nearby sandy beach, where another giant bird came to say

After the lunch we had another special thing planned. Sailing on a small boat up the river we crossed earlier. Well it was about time we saw some crocodiles, we heard so much about them. We did not have to wait long to see them. Few of them were sunbathing on the shores and few were swimming around. We were told these species is the largest, some males have reached length of over 8 meters. To top it off we also spotted some pythons in the tree canapies above the river.

After the river safari we departed toward home, stopping on the way in some gorge. Nothing to special compared to what we have in Slovenia.

Cairns is somewhere toward the end of photo.

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Thus says Jani Bizjak

03:45 Tue.

29 Aug, 2017

Goodbye Melbourne

Hello Sydney

Tags: end of work, flight, last day, Melbourne, Opera, sydney, Sydney bridge

Sydney , Australia

15 °C

Partly Cloudy

6:18 am

5:36 pm

I have finished my work on Friday evening. It was very interesting and informative conference but very tiring at the same time. Next year Sweden, hopefully! 🙂

In the evening Veronika and I decided to go see a rugby game on an enormous stadium near our hotel. I have never been in a stadium that big, it can accept 55.000 people, but during our visit “only” 48.000 people were present. The game on the other hand was interesting, I guess it would be more fun if we actually new the rules. It seems like some kind of mix between football and baseball.

Enormous stadium with capacity of 55.OOO people.

On Saturday we spent whole day on the Ocean Road and in the evening we had to prepare for our departure. I was pleasantly surprised by the city and it’s citizens. Everyone was incredibly nice to us, the city is relatively clean for it’s size and the architecture in the city center is nice. I still haven’t gotten used to the left side driving yet, but hopefully will soon, we are planning to rent a car later on our trip.

We left for the airport on Sunday 7 AM and arrived in Sydney at noon.

Veronika has some relatives living in Suburbs of Sydney so we are staying at theirs place. The city is enormouse, it took us over 3h to drive from the airport to their house, and we never left the city.

Yesterday we took an opportunity to explore the city, but more on this later as we are already at tge airport again, preparing to go to Cairns in the north for almost 17 days. This time we are traveling extremely light, only 2 backpacks 6kg each. Hopefully we wont freeze up there since we didn’t have space for warm cOpera and Opera and bridve

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Thus says Jani Bizjak

01:10 Sun.

27 Aug, 2017

The Great Ocean Road

Tackling with Wildlife

Tags: 12 apostle, cockatoo, Melbourne, parrot, the great ocean road, waves

Melbourne , Australia

7 °C

Breezy

6:48 am

5:54 pm

On Friday evening I have finished with work, so yesterday we booked a whole day trip to the iconic Ocean Road to the south of the Melbourne. After an hour travelling through the suburbs of Melbourne we have finally reached the beginning of the road.

We were driving on a small bus alongside beautiful sandy beaches. There is not much to the south except open ocean and Tasmania. The waves were incredibly large compared to the ones around Mediterranean sea.

Long sandy beaches, with about 2m waves.

Almost makes you want to jump in, to bad it's only 10 degrees here. Must be great during the summer. — Almost makes you want to jump in, to bad it’s only 10 degrees here. Must be great during the summer.

We made several stops along the way on the numerous beaches and small towns. In one of the locations there were some native Australian animals living around the trees – to be precise some wild koalas, Cockatoos and some parrots.

Sleeping in the tree. They sleep for 20 hours per day.

They must be used to people feeding them because as soon as we got close one of the birds actually flew directly on Veronika’s head. Haha she got so scared she almost broke her neck. We soon got used to them and it was fun petting them a bit as they landed on our hands and even head.

First landing on Veronika's head. The parrot really scared her. — First landing on Veronika’s head. The parrot really scared her.

Arr, like a pirate. They were actually quite heavy. The bigger ones were probably at least 2kg.

After getting used to them it wasn't so scary. — After getting used to them it wasn’t so scary.

Guy swarmed by birds. I think he had some seeds with him.

We continued our trip toward some kind of rain forest. I think you can’t say it was really tropical but it did have some large trees.

Our last destination was 12 apostles, probably the most iconic cliffs in the Australia. After seeing the enormous waves probably 5m+ it is easy to understand how this rock in the middle of sea have formed.

Well it wouldn't be Australia without some dangerous animals around every bush. — Well it wouldn’t be Australia without some dangerous animals around every bush.

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Thus says Jani Bizjak