From Melbourne I went on Friday the 22th November to Geelong. Over the weekend I stayed in Geelong with an German-Australian couple. I contacted them on warmshowers.org. It was very exciting for me to make acquaintance with Frederike (from Germany) and Guy (from Australia). Before my trip I was reading their blog www.abikejourney.com, but then I forgot about it. By random I met these people that inspired me. They cycled in 2010/2011 from Europe to Australia and did 18.000 km with their bikes. When I arrived in Geelong I did nearly 18.000 km as well, what a chance. Freddie and Guy are very kind. I felt like they want to pay back all the hospitality to me, that they received on their trip. We shared our adventures and found out about all the same places we saw and similar experience we made on our trip. Our common highlight was Iran, Freddie and Guy spent even two months there. I stayed three nights at their home. Freddie baked a Gugelhupf (a German Bundt cake), I think it was the best cake that I will ever get in Australia. It was not easy to leave their place. [...]

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. [...]