Uniting Care Wesely Adelaide Inc. – UCW
UCW is the organization we will work with. Today we had our first meeting there. The people are all pretty nice and we have got a first idea about the projects we will do there. But good for us we will not start our project within the next 2 or 3 weeks. So we have time left to do a little bit of research before starting.
First day at UniSA and house hunting
Today was our first day at the University of South Australia (UniSA). We got our computer logons, got introduced to a few people and had lots of time to search for a place to stay.
But this is not so easy, because we only want to stay for 3 ½ months …
We had a look at two different places, one in the CBD (Central Business District) and one in the close east of Adelaide. Both owners wanted people to stay longer L.
But hope springs eternal! At the moment we are staying at the youth hostel YHA which is actually pretty good for a hostel, but not the best place to stay for long time.
Arriving in Adelaide
Hey everybody,
we finally made our way to Adelaide. We are currently staying at the YHA (hostel). Right now we are trying to find a permanent place to stay at. We'll see how that will work out.
Greetings to everyone,
Johannes and Verena
Heading to Adelaide
Hello everyone,
We enjoyed some great days in Darwin and in Kakadu National Park ... Right now we are at the airport again as we'll head to Adelaide in about 1 1/2 hours. We probably won't upload any new info or pictures until some time next week as we don't have internet access (just like in the last days). But we'll report from our trip as soon as possible.
See ya, Verena & Johannes
Kakadu National Park
The night had been short when we got up at 4.45 a.m. to wait for our tour guide to pick us up at 5.50 a.m. With six other people and Jeff – our guide – we headed off to Kakadu. Kakadu is Australia's largest national park as it's twice the size of Belgium. It is 150km east of Darwin. We had three days to see everything.
First day:
- watching crocodiles (salties and freshies – don't swim with the salties; they'll eat you) and beautiful birds from a boat in the Mary River Wetlands (billabong)
- enjoying wonderful Aboriginal rock art at Ubirr; gorgeous view over Nadab flood plain and at Arnhem Land
great fire camp, didgeridoo and camping at Muirella Park
Second day:
- learning about Aboriginal traditions: Playing the didgeridoo, getting to know Aboriginal hand craft, cooking the Aboriginal way and throwing spears at the pink pig 🙂
- visiting the Twin Falls: It actually took us about 2 hrs for about 70 km on a street only allowed for 4WD vehicles. We had a boat carrying us to the falls through a wonderful valley up to the path that led to the Twin Falls where would then go to by foot.
- visiting the Jim Jim Falls: We climbed over rocks about one kilometer to reach the base of Jim Jim. Right now the falls are dry as it's the dry season. As this is a place where there are no crocodiles directly at the falls we could go for a swim right to the base.
- overnight camping at Maguk
Third day:
- swimming in awesome plunge pools high up at Barramundi Gorge
- visiting Yellow Water to see some crocodiles
- having a look at some of the termite mounts (there are thousands of them)
- watching wild horses next to Old Jim Jim Road
- heading back to Darwin
Darwin
Darwin, a town with about 300,000 people, is the capital of the Northern Territory. We had only one day in town before our trip to Kakadu National Park. But the weather was great (something around 30 degrees celsius and no clouds at all) and we went to see the “Esplanade”, the harbor, the mall and lots of other stuff. Around noon we took part in guided tour through the parliament house. Our day ended in the really beautiful “deck chair cinema” (that's something like “Liegestuhlkino”) which actually happens to be an open air cinema. Guess which movie we saw under the stars … Australia 😉 Cool movie by the way.
P.S.: Note that cool hat Johannes got 😉
Just got to Singapore
Hey everyone,
we've just arrived at Singapore Airport 🙂 We'll head on to Darwin in about an hour.
The first part of our travel was pretty relaxed, but here its about 30 degrees celsius and humid as hell 🙁
Cheers,
Verena and Johannes
P.S.: The keyboard is really strange ...
We will start our trip soon – preparations
Hello everyone,
We only have 3 days left before we will start our trip to Australia. So at the moment we are getting our things together.
We hope that with a big list we will not forget anything!
Our plane will start at Monday night (23:55) from Frankfurt. The airline is Qantas. We will land in Darwin on Wed. 18th August 2:35 am Darwin time (I think this is Thu. 19:05 in Germany). So the time difference for Darwin is 7 ½ hours.
We will then have one day in Darwin and start a 3-day Kakadu-Tour on the 20th.
So we are looking forward to write here again after our days in Darwin (if we will have Internet).
Cheers
Verena and Johannes