Our Sabbatical: Traveling and Living in Australia

Today I want to tell you that our Sabbatical in Australia consists of two parts:

Part 1 > Traveling through Australia

Our travels all over Australia, some of which you have already heard about here on our blog!

and

Part 2 > Living in Australia

Living in one place, with and among Australians, with the idea of getting to know the unique 'Australian Way of Life', which I haven't talked about yet and now I want to catch up on!

So where exactly do we live?

Of course, Australia

Some of you may wonder why Australia?
I have to go back a bit: in 1998, exactly 22 years ago, after studying and having several years of work experience, 'we needed to get away' so we bought a cheap 'Round-the-World-Ticket and off we went. 4 months in Southeast Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific! During our 8-week trip to Australia at that time, we traveled around Queensland as backpackers with a rental car. And when we went on to the South Pacific (the flights had to be booked in advance), we both felt like we had to come back here, it was so amazing and there is so much more to see, like the Uluru, the Outback in the west...!!!

And when we returned to Germany, years went by, we got married, had two great sons, moved across Germany about 5 times, established ourselves professionally, renovated an old farmhouse, planted two trees, and yet that longing to go away was still there...

And now, in our mid-50s, with two teenage sons who could do a year abroad right now, we thought, why not:
'Just come along!'
Maxi and Moritz didn't really share the excitement ;-), but Günter in particular persisted with the idea and that's why the four of us ended up in Australia, about 15,000 km away.

Queensland

And again in the beautiful state of Queensland, which is about 5 times larger than the Federal Republic of Germany, with an area of around 1.9 million km2.
But there are only about 3 people living on one square kilometer here, compared to 223 in Germany!

First a few facts:

Queensland is located in northeastern Australia, has a 7,000 km long coastline (as the crow flies: Berlin > Bangladesh!), which is also home to the unique 2,000 km long Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef system on Earth. The adjacent Coral Sea flows into the Pacific Ocean. Cairns in the tropical north is called the Gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest. Queensland's capital city is Brisbane, located in the subtropical south with a population of 2 million, where nearly half of Queensland's 4.7 million inhabitants live.

Queensland offers everything we wished for in terms of landscape:
Magnificent coastline, endless deserted beaches, sea temperature of around 26 °C, unique fauna and flora, lots of green with its evergreen national parks and rainforests, table mountains, the Atherton Tablelands with stunning waterfalls, and in the south, a mild climate for us Central Europeans, with not too hot summers and mild winters where it doesn't get colder than 13°C.

So it was clear to us that it should be somewhere in southern Queensland, near Brisbane, but not too populated and preferably by the sea. And that's why we chose...

Noosa

More about that in the next article...