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Australia, the island on the other side of the World, with a basal surface of appr. 20.202.020 square miles (22nd times bigger than Germany) but with
only 19 million inhabitants (which means appr. 5 adults per square miles; Germany has 600 adults); is the smallest continent on Earth.
You get the best impression of the size of the country and the enormous distances, if you travel along the West Coast, in the Northern Territory and in the Centre. Also the very high temperatures (122°F is no rarity) in the Centre makes living quite difficult, but still those regions (Outback) have their special fascination. Maybe it is the request for silence, loneliness (not seldom there are 400 miles between settlements), the adventure and the challenge to survive in this wilderness (it’s not only the home of kangaroos and koalas, there are also poisonous spiders, scorpions, snakes and crocodiles), that gives people
the challenge to settle and survive in regions like that.
Tired but happy beeing on the road again, we arrived in September 2002 after an 18 hour flight (via Durban) in Perth “the farcorner” in
Western Australia. The next day our motorcycle passed the fussy quarantine inspection (bike has to be absolutly clean, almost sterile) and we received our import permit. After a short sightseeing tour through Perth and Fremantle we hit the road to Darwin. On our way we visited the bizarre shapes out of sandstone in the Pinnacle Desert and the free living dolphins (sometimes they get close to the beach and push with their nose against your shin-bone) in Monkey Mia.
Even days later we were still dreaming of this event, while driving through the Outback, especially because the fascinating Bungle-Bungle Nat. Park was closed due to heavy fires and besides that there was actually not much to see (a bottle-tree here and a termite-housing there) on our further way to
Darwin. 130 miles east of Darwin you find the Kakadu Nat. Park. This park impresses not only because of his size, but also because of his variety of
plants and animals, especially the frightening salt water crocodiles.
The Stuart Highway, almost 2000 miles in length, runs through the heart of Australia and divides the country into 2 identical parts. We where impressed
by the Devils Marbles (huge round stones) just 250 miles ahead of Alice Springs, where we visited the “School of the Air” and the headquarters of
the “Flying Doctors”. This an absolutly MUST as well as a visit of “Ayers Rock (Uluru)”, an over 1000 feet high rock, changes his colour depending
on the time of the day. Not as spectacular, but still impressing are the “Olgas”. They are only 20 miles away from Ayers Rock.
Our next stops on our way south were Cooper Pedy (is the place for digging opals) and Adelaide before we drove along the Great OceanRoad,
which brought us into Melbourne, where we stored our motorcycle, ready to continue in a couple of months.
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