582. Day of travel

17.780 km

Although I was tired of cycling I did the Capital City Trail on the next day after my arrival. The weather was so nice, that I didn’t want to stay at home. It’s a 45 km bicycle trail around the city and it was very busy. Melbourne is a large city (7000 km², Berlin has 890 km²).  The suburbs are spread out, it seems that everybody lives in their own house and not in apartments. I like the cute cottages they coin the cityscape in the suburbs. The center of Melbourne is very quirly, they are so much going on, so many people around. It’s like on a Friday evening, but everyday. You can see a lot of street art, not only in the famous Flinders Street, it’s covered over the whole city. [...]

I was seeking for a quiet and scenery way to Melbourne. The experienced cyclists Alex Zander, Cohen and Anthony helped me in advance to find a good way through the mountains. I havn’t been in the mountains since Iran, it was one year ago and there was my mate Guillaume with me who pushed me. Now I was on my own and I will take some gravel roads. A new challenge for me. I left Canberra on the 3th November and was heading to Tumut. On this way I had my first gravel road (45 km long) and I climbed up to 1200 m. It was Sunday and lots of day-tripper covered me in dust, when they passed by with their 4WD. I camped on 1000 m somewhere in the forest. [...]

563. Day of travel

16.670 km

As I arrived in the center of Canberra, I missed the people. It seems like a ghost town. Later I found out that Canberra has several satellite towns, where the people are living. My host picked me up with his cycle and we went together to his home. I cycled a lot around Canberra on the next day. This city is a planed city with big, long roads and many parks. In the center is an artificial lake, the Lake Burley Griffin. On the main road, the Canberra Avenue, I nearly run over a brown snake. She was very alive and I avoided an collision at the last moment. Canberra is the capital of Australia, there are mostly government buildings in the center. Not that interesting for me. I visited the National Museum of Australia (free admission) and I like it. From Mount Ainslie I had a good view of Canberra. [...]

I started from Sydney together with other cyclists. Tom, Toco and Jeff did a weekend tour to the Royal National Park south of Sydney. As we started Tom said in proper German “Auf Los gehts los!” (off we go or let’s go). I didn’t heard this slogan for years and I had to laugh about it. Jeff leaded us on a cycle path out of the city. The Royal National Park was hilly, we often had to wait for Toco, it was his first long cycle tour. But we were not in a hurry, our daily target was 60 km and in the end we did 80 km. Jeff took us to Wattamolla Beach, where daring visitors jumping from the cliffs in a lagoon. It was very beautiful. Jeff had to go back on the same day. But Tom and Toco stayed with me in Scarborough, where we camped next to a surf club. On the next morning we cycled together to Wollongong. There Tom and Toco took the bus back to Sydney. [...]

555. Day of travel

16.172 km

In Sydney I’ve met a couple of very nice people. It started with my host Jeff, he is an Australian and originally from Queensland. He has a shared house in Surry Hills, that’s very central. In the house lived a brazilian-portuguese couple, a guy from Spain and Tom in a tent in the backyard as well. Tom is from France and he started his cycle trip in Cairns and came down the East Coast. He passed Childers also, where I’ve been on a farm for 5 months. He is working since 2 months as a painter in Sydney. It was nice to speak in French to him, because he always tried to answer in German to me. He did a two month internship in Germany. It’s very rare to meet a French who makes an real afford to speak German, I support this. Tom loves to play samba. The big target on his trip is Brazil. His blog in French www.lemondeenrouelibre.com [...]