Expensive, Flooded but Beautiful | Australia Part I

Hello Folks,

The silence is over here on our blog if it comes to TATW stories and photos. We know it, we are way behind schedule with blogging but you should follow us on twitter or get friends on Facebook to keep better track of where we are and what’s going on. Just saying. And again we would like to apologize to those unconditional followers here on the blog for coming over so often even though we have no updates for a while now! For those you have not been with us in Australia via Facebook, and for all others as well, here is our first part of this incredible huge country and continent respectively.

We heard it already weeks before we actually got there that Queensland had heavy rain and is widely flooded. In fact we were a bit concerned to fly in areas for a vacation where people just lose their homes and belongings. But at that time, Brisbane did not had yet that massive problem they should get later on. And also, some may still work in tourist industries and depend on them even more in bad times.

When we arrived in Brisbane and checked in at Annies Shandon Inn, which is btw one of the nicest inns we have ever been and highly recommended due to price value and friendliness of the staff, the rain seamed never to stop again. Actually we have not seen such huge continuous rain since ages. No wonder that the dry Aussi ground cannot handle this amount of water.

But Brisbane offers quite a few nice places to go and hang out during rainy times. Guess what, lots malls :-)
Anyway we decided to go further to Byron Bay because we heard it is a nice surfers place and the whether was supposed to be better somehow further south. The bus to Byron Bay was easy and quick, not too cheap but ok. We arrived there and the first thing we heard as we step out the bus was “Byron Bay is booked out”! WTF? Are you kidding us? What is that supported to mean? Easy as said, we were running around in circles to look for a cheap place. Cheap in that case means at least 10 times more expensive than we where used to in Asia. But guess what, it can be worse!
We walked in a motel where it said “vacancy” and asked for one overnight, just two people. “We have only one room left, king sized bed, we have a pool too. It’s 380$ a night” …. WTF? Are you kidding us? Have you lost some gold nuggets in there? What kind of room is that?
It turned out, that it was just a regular room, nothing special at all. And as an addition the woman behind the counter let us know, that Byron Bay is maybe not the place we would like to be, maybe we would not even like to be here in Australia. Nice treatment of your clients btw!

For 380$ (to clarify one AUD was 1,3€ that time) we would have slept on the street to be honest rather than in a place they ridiculously rice prices depending on the day and season. Well we found something for a bit cheaper but still very expensive compared to what we would have liked to pay. Sure it’s Friday and peak peak high season, but we have not yet won in the lottery!

People say Byron Bay is the place where Kylie Minogue and Russle Crow are spending their holidays, sorry we did not have a clue at all before hand, would not have stopped here. We tried to get the best out of this overpriced situation and it is very nice town but where ever you went, it was expensive like no where else before.
So we spent time at the beach, walked around the town. It was raining a lot too. The beach was very beautiful and you won’t believe the variety of crazy people we saw there. Still a bunch of cool surfers too :-)
Went out to a cool night bar with live music. Really really good performance and again crazy hippy people everywhere.

We left to Sydney using Greyhound’s overnight bus, not telling the price again, we just imagined how far we went for that price in South East Asia. Sure enough, you cannot compare these countries anyway. Just saying!

On the way down we had one really beautiful sunrise. We saw quit a few over the past month but this one was special as we have not seen the sun for at least one week.

Sydney is as expected a wonderful city. Really liked it and the flair. Sitting around at the marina next to the world famous opera house in the bright midday Aussi sun! Priceless! Had a great time in general but especially the meet-up with Patricia and Alex from hochzeitswahn.de was a beginning of a wonderful relationship. We spent time in the Löwenbräu for some Weißbier and you might guess that we would have loved to have some German food as well. But let us know in the comments if you buy yourself a Leberkässemmel for 18$!! We don’t!
Patricia and Alex brought us to some great places and finally invited us to their home for overnight the next day. Sure we where honored to meet them for BQQ and beer with a ton of fun. These two folks are just amazing. They do not just have regular time consuming jobs and run hochzeitswahn, they also have SHooTY which is a superb idea for the wedding industry. Be sure you check out what they do, it’s worth it! After a very funny evening, a morning boudoir shoot we took the overnight train from Sydney to Melbourne. Compared to everything else, the train seems to be a less expensive alternative for traveling in OZ.

We where all exited about Melbourne, it’s very different to Sydney. As Sydney was to our impression very business style and a bit American, Melbourne reminds you more to be European in contrast. Again this was our feeling and might be totally different depending on what you see.
We arrived very early and had a nap before we met German photographer Xenia Berg for a casual portrait shoot. We did the shoot in Brunswick Street which turned out to be our favorite place in Melbourne. See photos of the shoot here.
After that we were invited by Jo and John, we shot their wedding last year in Austria, for John and Chris birthday party near Brunswick. It was so great meeting all the people from this wonderful wedding again. We even met maybe our biggest fan there, which was an unbelievable feeling. This guy knew everything, we ever put online, about us! He remembers things we had forgotten already. He is a fun guy and truly a very honest person!

For the rest of hour stay in Melbourne we did a photowalk in Brunswick and met a friend we know from our last Indian trip. Kyle, funny guy, went for Indian dinner with us and showed us around with his huge off road jeep. Was really great meeting him again!

That’s it for part one as we go and get our Jucy camper van to explore the countryside of Australia, which had a ton of great experiences for us. Stay tuned!

Love from Miami

Carmen and Ingo

good surf at Byron Bay

these white Ibis’ are just freaking amazing birds. how they walk and eat its too funny!

stick insect found at the street.

amazing sunrise during the overnight bus trip to Sydney. the sky is literally buring

worlds famous opera house in Sydney

photowalking in Brunswick – Melbourne

too bad we could not find a couple for the short term

just posing, no washing this time :-)

calling home :-)

the textures in that area are phenomenal.

also lotsa art on the street walls