James’ travelog

Happy towel day from Melbourne, Australia!

Shortly after my arrival in Melbourne, over three months ago by now, a group of international students decided to form The Dinner Club. The idea behind it: every week, one of us prepares and hosts a dinner at her or his place. From sushi to Mexican tortillas to British custard… we’ve shared it all. Without further ado, here are my dinner friends with whom I’ve been sharing great meals, drinks and parties.

As a small experimental project I started up Backpack Blogs a couple of months ago. The idea behind that was to give backpackers their own place on the web for keeping an online travel journal.

Lately I’ve been spending some of my spare time working on the next step of that project and have built a personal publishing service for travellers, which I’d like to make publicly available at some point in the future.

At the moment I’m looking for some testers who are willing to play around with the current beta version of the service. The purpose of this is simply getting some feedback on e.g. overlooked bugs, usability, missing features, interface design, etc.

So, if you’re interested in being a tester, just send me an email or leave a reply here so I can get back to you.

Cheers,
James.

One week ago I went on a three day bushwalking experience, which was the second and last fieldtrip of my subject Education in Natural Landscapes. Several hours away from any form of civilization, armed with a heavy backpack that contained a map, flashlight, a set of spare clothes, sleeping bag, tent, stove, pots & pans and food for three days, we started hiking on early Saturday morning.

To my happy surprise there was plenty of wildlife to be spotted: kangaroos, wallabies, all sorts of beautifully coloured birds… Wilson’s Promontory is a vast nature reserve located on the most southern point of Australia and it is beautiful. Unfortunately, its location makes the Prom very much exposed to the weather. The first day started off very nice, but in the middle of the first night we got awoken by an onset of heavy rainfall, which didn’t stop until 24 hours later.

Needless to say, the second day and the 25 kilometres we had to bridge were not all that great. Water came down in a variety of frozen and liquid forms, and in vast amounts. Add to that leaking rain clothes and strong winds, and you can imagine that at the end of the day we were soaked, covered in mud, and as close to hypothermia as we’d ever been. After arriving at our designated camping area, setting up our soaked tents and cooking up a warm meal, everyone headed towards their tents and into the down-filled sleeping bags (where life was warm and good!).

Despite the weather, it was a great feeling to be away from the city for a while and to live in and with nature. You fill up your water bottle with water from the little creeks that flow everywhere, you get up and go to bed with the sun, time, technology, traffic and money do not exist… It reminded me a bit of my very impressive jungle trek in Guatemala last summer.

About the latter trip I didn’t have to write a 5 page essay though…

James

The past weekends have been great fun. Deciding to make use of the last few beautiful days - yes it is slowly becoming autumn here - me and a group of friends headed for the beach on Saturday (four(?) weeks ago). We called upon an Aussie friend with a car and we were off. Music loud, and 2 hours of highway ahead… it felt like a road trip. Torquay beach was amazingly beautiful, the best beach I’ve seen so far in Australia. A bit of relaxation, juggling, reading, jumping in the waves, sleeping, eating… I love the beach.

On Sunday it was diving time - finally! Location: Phillip Island, located at the southern end of Port Phillip Bay, the bay on which Melbourne is located as well. The island is a bit of a tourist attraction because of its penguin colonies who roam the shores at dusk. The water was cold and rather choppy, and visibility wasn’t extremely high. Nevertheless, if felt great to be in the underwater world again.

The next weekend: two days on The Great Ocean Road, built between 1918 and 1932 by thousands of returned soldiers, with the purpose of ending the isolation of the coastal towns between Torquay and Warnambool. It’s a 300 kilometer curvy drive with an amazing coastal scenery, its most recognized feature is probably the 12 apostles, big limestone rock stacks. We started off surfing at Anglesea which was great fun, and I did pretty well for a first timer. Watching koalas along the road (my first real ozzie animals!). The last day was mostly spent on watching the twelve apostles (of which there are in fact only 8 remaining) and exploring the coast around them.

And this weekend I spent diving again, with the Underwater Club. I’ve in fact just come back from two days in the waters around Queenscliff where I did some nice dives. The seals that came along and played with us were a highlight.

(Due to my USB cable getting a bit wet, I’ll upload the accompanying pics later.)