After conquering the summit my way led me back to the coast. I missed the ocean and was happy to have a relaxed day on the beach. I didn’t really feel like moving anyway, my legs hurt pretty badly after the walk up and down the mountain the day before. For the night I stayed near the Gippsland Lakes and on the next day moved on to Wilsons Promontory or “The Prom”.

Upon arrival in Melbourne I remembered how driving a car in Sydney and Brisbane was and decided to not do that to myself again. I left the car in a residential neighbourhood half an hour outside the city and took a train into the CBD. Didn’t regret that decision. Melbourne struck me as more relaxed than Sydney even though they are of a similar size (about 4m citizens). There is a lot of nice old buildings in the city and every now and then an antique tram or horse carriage drives down the road.

In short: Made it to the top of the Australian mainland. 2228m high, 18km walk, blisters after 6km, freezing wind and burning sunshine. Awesome! Here’s some pictures.

After leaving the farm I made a stop in Canberra, Australia’s capital. The city is somewhat weird. For a capital it is unusually calm and wide. It probably is the only capital in the world that doesn’t have an international airport. In Katoomba I met a guy from Canberra and he told me that most of the jobs in the city are government jobs and thus most of the people in the city are boring nerds.

Can’t believe it’s been almost a month on the farm now. Here’s some impressions from that time. View over the farm - the house is behind the trees Sunset The small river that crosses the farmland Ben, JD’s girl friend and AJ in the kitchen One of the peacocks (looks worse at the moment cause the dog got hold of it…)

Now that an end of my one year visa is foreseeable it is time to think about the time after May. Returning to Germany is not an option at the moment as I’m not done exploring this amazing country yet and I don’t miss anything about Germany except family and friends. My plan is to get a second year working holiday visa which requires me to work three months (or 88 days) in rural Australia.

This morning Susan left for a couple of weeks of holiday in France. The farm is now in backpacker hand, mostly in Ben’s who already spent more than five months here and is in charge of everything now. While it might sound like endless partying all day and night, it is not. The three Frenchies are as boring as a white carpet. They hardly ever chat and if I wanted them to drink a beer I’d have to force it down their throats.

On Saturday AJ, Sean and me went for a little off-road action near the farm. AJ took his 4WD, Sean manned the quad and I gave AJs dirt bike a try. I never sat on one before and never drove a motorcycle off the road. Well I did once but that didn’t end well. With our colourful group we headed down to the river where a crossing leads to the more remote parts of the farms land.

On January 26th Aussies celebrate the landing of the first fleet in Sydney Cove in 1788. Indigenous groups claim it should be called mourning day or invasion day. They probably have a point there. We were invited by the sister of a friend of Susan to celebrate in the traditional Aussie way: With beer and BBQ. We didn’t know any of the people and they didn’t know any of us (except for Susan of course).

Ever since we left Brisbane I wanted to get my car checked because of some suspicious noise from the CV joints. I got a recommendation for a local mechanic from Susan and stopped by his shop on Thursday. While he examined the car I went for a stroll through Yass. The town is almost 200 years old and with a population of 5.300 reasonably big. The main street features a lot of old buildings and if it wasn’t for the cars and the tarmac it could almost look like the Wild West.