Melbourne for x-mas, Tasmania and Alice

This entry is about when Aaran finally got to see his family and friends again after 4,5 years abroad and when I got to meet and get to know them!
I have also written about when we went to Tasmania and our visit to the outback and Alice springs.

Our time in Melbourne

On the 17th of Dec we arrived at the airport in Melbourne. It was quite late at night and it had been raining so it was a bit chilly when we stepped out of the airport. Aaran's dad, Kevin, picked us up, he had brought some beers and vodka drinks for us to have on the way home to his house. He was very happy to see Aaran again and to meet me. We stayed the night at Kevin's house and stayed up long talking. It was nice. The day after Aaran's mom picked us up from his dads place. It was her birthday and Aaran had thought to surprise her, but since he had sent her the itinerary to her some months ago it wasn't a big surprise! She was of course also happy to see her long lost son and we went to her house where we would stay most of the time we spent in Melb. I finally got to see the house where Aaran grew up and the suburb where it is located. That night we went out to a restaurant for dinner, it was BYO, something I had heard about but never experienced before, like so many of the things Aaran's told me about.( For you who don't know, BYO is Bring your own drinks, a nice way to be able to have wine with dinner without paying a fortune.) The dinner was great, all of Aaran's siblings were there with their partners and his mom and aunt.






After the first introduction to the family came hectic times for Aaran to catch up with everyone and for me to meet all of them. We went to the local cricket and footy club, which has been a big part of Aaran's life and where he still have many friends, for a 80's party that was pretty crazy. It was really nice to get to know his brothers more since they all have friends at the club they were there also.




We spent some days before x-mas at Aaran's younger brothers and his girlfriends, Emmet and Brie, house down on the mornington peninsula. It is a holiday house that they rent out sometimes. It was near to the beach and has a big garden somethin g that was nice when the temperature didn't drop below 30. Some other of their friends came around and we had bbqs and bonfires in the garden.


Christmas was at Tara's and Richardo's ( Aaran's sister and her fiance) new house a bit further out in the Melb suburbs. We arrived around 9 in the morning and helped to set up the table and do the finishing details before the other guests arrived around 11. We were a lot of people, family from both his father's side and his mother's came, along with Richardo's family. The food was a mix of salads, prawns and bbq meat. The weather was ok, around 20 degrees, we sat outside a bit.


Everyone asked me how it felt to have such different x-mas in the heat. To me it felt like a really nice family day but it wasn't really x-mas. I guess that in Sweden we have so many preparations and build up some feelings for x-mas that I didn't get while away. Partially i guess it was since we were in asia the months before, where they didn't have a sign of the holidays and since it was so different celebrated in Australia. I still enjoyed it very much and didn't really miss the swedish x-mas except for when I called and spoke with my family. Aaran and I had sent a package of some gifts from Vietnam that my dad had received and hidden until x-mas eve, when he would hand them out.




After x-mas comes boxingday (the 26th) and boxingday test in cricket, yey! We went to a nice bbq at Aaran's friends house, but after a while everyone watched cricket and I went home to rest instead. I haven't been able to develop an interest in that sport, if I could it would be much more fun to come with to the cricket club or someone's place when cricket is shown. The games are very long (all day every day for a week sometimes) and if you don't understand the game it seems totally actionless.





New Years we went to port Melb to one of Aaran's friends from London who has moved there. It was a dinner party with some nice people. There was a thunderstorm coming in that night, it was very hot and humid. At midnight we saw the fireworks and the lightning from the balcony. We spent some days in the city at Aaran's cousins house after new years. He lives in Carlton and from there we could walk to the centre. I really liked Melb as the mixed city it is. We walked down in "little italy" on Lygon street and had some nice pasta and good coffee. We made a visit to the old jail, as with many of the old towns in Australia the jail house is one of the oldest buildings. The famous outlaw Ned kelly was hung there in the late 1800's.




We had decided to buy a car so shortly after new years that's what we did. We got our hands on a 1990's subaru station wagon, which was just what we needed for our road trip up the coast. And living in the suburbs in Melb you need it pretty much to. We had some trouble with our used car dealer and it took long before he had it ready for us, but that wasn't too bad.




We took the car on the great ocean road. It was beautiful with the winding road, cliffs, nature and little towns on the way. We camped for 2 nights and got to really test the car when there was no tent site available for us and we had to sleep in it! We went there while it was still summer holidays, and all victorian families go there for vacation. We visited the famous Bell's beach, the home of surfing in Australia.


Tasmania

We booked a few trips from Melbourne and went to Tasmania for 9 days straight followed by a trip to the outback for a week. We flew to both places as we had found some cheap airtickets and didn't really have time to drive



I loved Tasmania. It was really beautiful and untouched. Much of the island is nature reserves and they have no big cities. We spent a few days in Hobart, couchsurfing at two guys place just outside the centre of town. There was a culture festival going on with some free stuff: we went to a wine tasting, a few concerts and some art galleries. After Hobart we hired a car for a week and decided on some different areas we'd like to discover. We had brought the tent and went for some longer overnight bushwalks. What we saw while hiking is beyond words. The sceneries were stunning. We stood on cliffs going 200 m straight down to the ocean, and lokked down on a group of sea lions hearing their cries. We walked along a perfect white beach and saw a pod of dolphins playing in the sea a few metres out.




We had luck with the weather, a good thing since we were camping and all things we did were outdoors. It got cold at night when we camped on top of a mountain and Aaran's toes got blue from walking with sneakers, but still it was great. We met many other travellers who were there for months doing only bushwalking.
I wouldn't hesitate to go back there some day.


Alice Springs and the beautiful rocks

On a mission to explore Australia, Aaran and I were home at his moms for a day washing our clothes and repacking our bags and headed for Alice Springs the next day.

The weather was to be 40 c everyday and sunshine so we could pack light.



As we arrived in Alice the landscape was surprisingly green and was nicely contrasting to the red mountains surrounding. Alice is in the middle of the McDonnell ranges. We hired a car almost imediately and drove out in the western McDonnell ranges. We visited some really cool gorges and swam in waterholes.


It was a long and hot drive, and since no radio chanels worked out there we had no entertainment. We had been told to stop at a gas station along the road to see a dog playing the piano, but when we came there he was not home.



We bought a three day pass at Uluru and camped just outside the park. The camp site had a pool which turned out to be our salvation when the heat rose above 40 c. The thing to do while out there is to see Uluru at sunrise, and at sunset. Driving to see sunrise meant driving while it was dark, which was strictly prohibited for our hire car because of the risk of hitting a Kangaroo or a Camel, since they are active around dusk and dawn. We did it anyway, there was no other way to do it and we didn't come across any animals so we were lucky i guess.



Seing Uluru was magical. Acording to the aborigines in the area Uluru was the place of their beginning, where all the dreams and spirits come from. It's a very sacred place, and I could feel it. There is the big controversy about the rock. The aborigines don't want people to walk on the rock since it is sacred to them, but it is not prohibited and therefore many tourists climb it anyway. When we were there the choice whether or not to climb was done for us, the climb was closed due to strong winds on the top.






Everything is so far away from everything in the outback. We drove for about 5h from Alice to reach Uluru, with absolutely nothing to see along the way. Just desert and a few petrol stations and more desert. The speedlimit was 130 and the road was straight and flat.


We camped outside Uluru in a resort area. There was a pool, which was our salvation. From 11 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, that's where we hung out.





Next to the Uluru are the Olgas, or Kata Tjuta as they are called by the aborigines. They are enormous rocks piled up just 20 km from Uluru, but not as famous. It was great walking amongst the rocks and it felt almost more impressive than Uluru since you walked in a valley surrounded by them. The random kangaroo with it's joey jumped around, but otherwhise we were alone with nature.


We continued on to the Kings Canyon. It is another incredible red rock formation in the middle of the desert. It takes about 3 hrs to drive there from uluru. There are sealed roads to almost every place, which is great, but the short cuts are all 4w drive roads, which we couldn't take with our little rental car. We were to see the canyon at sunrise and left our campsite in the dark and drove to the canyon. As we left the camp I had to get out of the car and open a cattle gate, without noticing the camera fell out of the car as I went. We drove about 30 km to the canyon and realized when we got there that the camera was gone. After a while of digging through all our things I realized that it must be on the road outside the camp. We drove back and found it in the exact spot where I had got out before. It was luck in the bad luck as we say in Sweden. We missed the sunrise but came to the canyon early enough to beat the heat.
We walked on the top edge of the canyon where sand and storms have shaped the rocks into domes. Looking over the top of the canyon you would see hundreds of stone domes, looking down in the canyon was a little oasis with a waterhole and some ancient plants and looking out was just miles and miles of flat desert.

After our excursion to the rocks we drove back to Alice springs. Aaran wanted to try the "short cut" and took the little 3 door absolutely not 4 w car on to a dirt road. After 2 hrs shaking around in 30 km an hour in 40 c heat we reached a sand dune and had to drive 2hrs back the same way and take the normal sealed road anyway. It made us realize exactly how rough the outback is.

We stayed 2 days in Alice and had a look around the town. It is very small and there's not so much to see there, but we had a look at the flying doctors and some aboriginal art. There were many aborigines in Alice and there are many commuinities in the outback where they live. We expected to see them around Uluru, but there was not one. In Alice they were mainly hanging out in the parks, sitting in the shade of the trees doing not so much. In Australia the aborigines are a very sensitive subject. There are lots of problems, as with any native people when a country is colonised, the aborigines have problems with alcohol and drugs. The australian government give money to them and houses to help out, but they seem to use the money toward their addictions and the problem gets worse. In some petrol stations we saw signs on the pumps saying "unsniffable", a very sad proof of the situation.
Alice has grown lots in the last 20 years. The people we spoke to in the shops had moved there recently for the job oportunities that comes with tourism.
One week in the outback was not much, as with so many places I'd like to have spent longer time there. Before I knew anything about Australia this is the way I had imagined it to be. I know that Aaran enjoyed it just as much as I did, it is in the same country, but still a different planet from where he grew up.

Next blog entry will be about our road trip from Melb to Cairns