14th post: Exxxtreme Australia !

Dear Friends,


As always late in my blog update…too busy this year !!
So here are finally the pictures from my 3 weeks trip to Australia…just a little glimpse of this huge and beautiful country…
This time it was a friendship trip: 1 week visiting my friends Yan and David in Sydney, 1 week with my friend from Belgium Laura, and 1 week with Brice my friend from new Caledonia who came for a holiday before going back to Noumea).
This Australian trip has been full of ADRENALINE !!!....(my bank account also suffered haha…): flying, diving, jumping out of a plane, trekking in the jungle….great moments.




So starting with Sydney….there I played the perfect tourist (with my camera around the neck haha): opera, harbour, trekking, zoo, beaches, and the best of the best: the coast and the blue mountains from the air !! (yes I did some piloting at last…9 months without flying…I had to do a refresh…good spot no??).


Thanks to Yan and David’s welcoming, I was a queen in and around Sydney: amazing house in the city centre…a great coffee around the corner:….”Sur Bourke” is Yan’s coffee shop with a French touch in Darlinghurst…:-), some trekking in Manly with Yan and David, and some good diner home made !


I also took advantage of my Sydney visit to meet Elli my English friend I met in Vietnam !!! She is now living in Sydney and we were so happy to meet again after few months (she was my motorbike Easy Rider companion for the Vietnam adventures!).

After 1 week, I headed off to Cairns and the Great Barrier to meet Laura….and to do some diving, diving, and more diving !!!


And Laura can confirm…we did an amazing liveaboard trip (Note: a liveaboard diving trip is like a cruise specially for divers, 4 days/4 nights outside the Great Barrier to the best diving spots).


14 dives in 3 days…puffff !! That’s a busy programme…: eating, diving, resting, eating, diving, eating again, diving again…etc…. sleeping (if possible when the boat was not moving too much!)…what a life !!!


Ahhhh…by the way…diving with sharks…(if I tell you we were at 25 mts under water at a 5 mts distance from approximately 50 sharks eating tuna heads…and NOT being in a cage…will you believe me ???)...Just look at the pictures
Well what can I say…it was awesome (like the Ozzies would say) ! I actually took the opportunity to rent a good underwater camera…to share with you the ocean wonders… Not always nice and pink though…I got a fire coral burn souvenir on my leg…and a bite-kiss from a fish on the same leg the same day…!


And guess how we came back from the outer reef…? By plane !… Low flight…over the great barrier reefs…as we say in french: “un truc de malade !!”…(OK at that point I know some of you will totally hate me….!!).
After diving under water….we went heuuuu….diving in the sky !! Yes yes…Laura and Bera jumping out of a plane for a 1 min free fall and skydiving youhouuuu…and we loved it !

Then for the 3rd week, Brice, a friend from New Caledonia, joined us, starting with a trek in the famous Rainforest…the oldest rainforest of the world with hundreds of vegetal and animal species endemic to this region… Forests…beautiful and wet !
Laura went and we continued with Brice exploring the rainforest, butterfly and bird parks…and meeting Kangaroos !!! So cute…even with the baby in mummy’s pocket


Then we headed down south to Airlie Beach and its famous whiteheaven beach in the Whitsundays Islands…. (needless to tell you all the adventures to between Cairns and Airlie Beach….OK I’ll summarize: I forgot my netbook and my passport in the safety locker of the Backpack hotel and had to delay my trip, while Brice actually took the bus which got stuck and broke down on the road…!! Haha…but still on time for the rest of the trip).


So the cruise on the Whitsundays….well…it should have been amazing, but we got a horrible stormy weather and rain almost the whole trip.. that was very sad because we could not enjoy the sea as much as we would have liked to !! But still awesome place…(will need to come back hehe…!!;-).


Final stop before ending the trip: Townsville (or the ghost town as I named it…nobody there !!??) and Magnetic Island (named by James Cook after observing compass deviation when sailing in this region…). There, I got a “reward” for this last day: carrying a baby koala ! So cute…just fell in love !!

So that was the “Ozzie half-experience”…not even half….the country is huge and so many more place to see (especially the outback – inland trip – that I really want to do next time…).


Hope you enjoyed the pictures…and see you for my next (and last…huuuu ) blog: New Caledonia!
Hugs to all…Berangere.