For this story we have to go back to Barcelona. January 23rd, welcome dinner of the language course. By pure coincidence I am seated next to a girl from Australia. I started smiling as my thoughts took me back to the wonderful backpacking trip I did in Australia around the millennium. Visited great places along the east coast all the way down to Melbourne, and talking about it was making me very excited! She explained she was from Canberra.

Canberra. Even though I didn’t visit that place, my first thought and words about that place let no room for discussion: “Canberra? That’s a hole!”. Ok, have to explain something here, as even though I had not personally been there, I met many other people during my trip that explained Canberra was not the most fun place to be. So in the backpacker “scene” Canberra was in my opinion regarded to be a hole. Someplace you pass, or maybe have a small look, but leave quickly again onwards to better places. She clearly didn’t agree and wondered how I could judge the place without even having been there myself!

Well, I clearly was very wrong. After having stayed in Canberra for 5 weeks, I must admit it’s quite a nice place. The bush capital is very spacious, quiet (apart form some screaming cockatoos), great for biking, bush walking nearby and a number of lovely places to visit. For example the Australian War Memorial is very impressive. And very special for me to see was the “Allies in adversity“-exhibition there, focusing on the Dutch–Australian experience of the war in the Pacific, 1941–45.

Other nice things are going for a bike-ride along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. It’s fun seeing the Old Parliament House and especially the National Portrait Gallery. Great views from Mount Ainslie (and great ride up on the bike). Brilliant bush walking close by at Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and Namadgi National Park. And the wine-tasting we did on the edge of the city was great fun!

You will need a car though to get around easily, as public transportation ain’t superb (and full of freaks!) and won’t take you very far out of the city. And as it’s a very spacious city, distances between things can be big. Although the centre of town is still quite compact and most tourist attractions are in walk able distance (if you don’t mind a good walk that is). So in general it’s quite a nice place. Definitely not a hole. Sorry Sal! :-)

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Cycling in Australia was mainly focussed around 2 simple words, repeated uncountable times: keep left. Yes, my greatest problem wasn’t wind, bad roads, hills, rain or whatever, but it was keeping to the correct side of the road. At times it was quite obvious to stay on the correct side of the road, but on small roads, cycling paths or roads with little traffic I sometimes ended up on the right side of the road… not good and to prevent that I had to keep saying to myself to keep left!

When I did kept left, cycling in and around Canberra is mainly great fun! As soon as you get a bit out of the city and end up on the highways, the cycling pleasure goes down a bit. Riding on the shoulder, full of stones and dirt with cars flying by at 100km/h, doesn’t make very relax cycling. But besides that, it’s quite nice!

Except for a ride along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, it’s never really flat. Small hills provide a fun ride. Plus there are some challenging rides very close to the city as well. Take Mount Ainslie. Definitely a challenging climb with 2.5 km at an average grade of 8.6%… and knowing there is a small steep bump in the beginning of the climb and after that quite a long “doable” stretch, means that the end of the climb is much steeper then the average 8.6%… But then, with just a 2.5 km climb, it’s very doable! Even Sally “wiggled” her way to the top for the first time ever! :-)

The weather wasn’t that briljant for cycling the time I was in Canberra. With 12 degrees and without my cycling gear on a to small bike it could have been better. Although I must say I was very happy I could borrow Sal’s and her sister Pip’s bike to go for some rides! Already looking forward to take some rides in spring or summer. Black Mountain and Mount Stromlo will prove to be fun rides!!

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After the amazing diving experience we thought we had enough. We could have added an extra day to the dive course to get our Advanced Open Water certificate, but choose not to do that and just relax the last day in Port Douglas before going home. Well… that was the plan… As the Australian football team was playing the Thursday evening, what made it our Friday early morning at 0500 and we got up to watch them qualify for the next round, we were wide awake at 0700 and wondered what to do with the day.

The Low Isles had been mentioned before, because one of Sally’s friends (I think it was Robyn, the girl wonder) had recommended that place to us. So after a very short debate and a concluding “yeah, why not!” we booked a spot on a catamaran at 10 to take us to the Low Isles! And even though it might not have been planned, it still turned out to be quite a relax day.

The boat ride to the Low Isles was just a short one (about 45 minutes or so?) and the Low Isles appeared to be 2 small islands. One with mainly mangrove and the other a cute little one with a little lighthouse. As proper tourist-cattle we followed the big herd to the island which looked a lot different when covered with people in full blue body suits (to protect them from the sun, coral and hungry fishies).

Low Isles smurf

We brought our snorkelling gear and were excited to give it a go, as we were told there should be a lot of sea turtles around the Low Isles! And the stories were right!! We had to swim quite a bit out from the shore, but all of a sudden Sally spotted something weird in the water! A closer look proved it to be what we were looking and hoping for! A big turtle!!! Truly amazing experience! Ok… we were not allowed to swim with the turtles, follow them or get close… but I had to do all those things to get the following (fuzzy) picture:

Beautiful turtle!

But one little bit scared turtle was worth it! :-) Especially I looked like a big fishy myself underwater with my big eyes which looked even bigger through the mask! After seeing 2 more turtles we were getting cold and made our way back to shore, relaxed a bit more in the sun and took the boat back to Port Douglas in the afternoon. Because of the crowded beach and water the snorkelling wasn’t the best (again fuzzy water like in the busy section on Green Island) but definitely worth the trip! :-)

Low Isles	Lighthouse	Lighthouse again	Gorgeous view

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What a way to start a holiday in Australia. After arriving in Sydney, Sally and I flew up to Cairns to spend 2 weeks of holiday there. 5 days in Cairns and 9 in Port Douglas. Nothing planned really, except the accommodation, so we would see what we would do when we get there. First days were mainly relaxing and enjoying the weather and then we went on a day-trip to Green Island that came as part of the accommodation package.

And Green Island turned out to be something really special! We borrowed snorkelling gear on the big catamaran that brought us to the island and decided to try out the snorkelling in the “safe” area. A little part of the beach, guarded by a lifeguard for safe snorkelling. That was fun, but not briljant. As some many people were there, the water was very fuzzy with sand so the visibility wasn’t that great. But still we were able to see some very nice fishies. But after a walk around the island, we ended up at the walking-board to the boat. As there wasn’t much time left before the boat would leave, we had some doubts about snorkelling again or just going back to the boat. Luckily we decided to go snorkel some more! Because it turned out to be an amazing experience!!! There were no other people, deep clear water, some nice coral and so many different fishies!!! Amazing stuff!! At some point we were even swimming through a whole school of hundreds of fishies! So special!

With that great experience still fresh in our minds we arrived in Port Douglas. Again, first a couple of days of relaxing and then we got the idea to do a diving course. What better place to do such a course then the Great Barrier Reef?! So we signed up on Sunday and Monday we were in the classroom already. One full day of theory and the second day we stayed in the pool the whole day. Never thought you could get so cold in a swimming pool with water of 25 degrees… while wearing a wetsuit!!! The pool day was mainly very nerve-wracking. We had to go through and practise a number of exercises we had to do in Open Water the following 2 days and although they were not that difficult, just doing them once and not doing so well doing it, didn’t made me all that confident…

During the first dive in the (outer) Great Barrier Reef there was mainly one thought on my mind the entire dive. A simple: Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out. Breath in, breath out… Hardly had any time to enjoy the under water world, was only focussed on surviving! :-) And couldn’t have been more nervous for the next dive when we had to do our special exercises… it’s just a lot different taking off your mask in a two meter deep pool then 10 meters down on the bottom of the ocean… Especially as I already had trouble doing that in the pool! :-) Used contact lenses for the occasion and with closing my eyes as much as possible, it worked fine!

With every dive I got a bit more confident, but wasn’t able to really enjoy the experience until after all the special exercises were done and we could just “dive” on our last 2 dives and just enjoy it. Those dives showed that it’s truly amazing to be floating underwater and see the ocean life like that. Absolutely beautiful!! Already looking forward to the next dive, wherever it may be! Well… at least somewhere sunny and nice, no point in diving in Holland with a visibility of about 30cm… :-)

So now I am a certified PADI open water diver! :-) Wheehoo! If you wanne give it a try, and you are in the Port Douglas neighbourhood, go see Marcus at Discover Dive if you want the same great instructor as we had!

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