09.07. - 16.07.19 East Coast Part 1 (From Melbourne to Sydney via Canberra)

After the first part of our road trip, we spent a very cozy week in Ballarat, where we spent a lot of time at our second home with Brian and Emma, cleaned Ponyo and gave it a service. On the weekend, we took a trip to the Maze House, where we navigated our way through a labyrinth and enjoyed old-fashioned games.

Then it was time to drive to Melbourne, move into our Airbnb apartment, and pick up Schtä and Luki from the airport in the evening, who arrived well after a 24-hour journey. Already in the afternoon, we noticed how much we like Melbourne and how nice it was to be back. And in the evening, the joy was huge to see our dear friends again.

Days 1 - 3 in Melbourne: After a rather short night, we were all eager to explore Melbourne. We dedicated the first day to the city center and combined the way back home with a few trendy shopping streets. To maintain our energy and enjoy the Melbourne coffee scene, we regularly took breaks to have a cup. The eating stops were already well selected by us in advance, as we knew exactly what we wanted to show Schtä and Luki. After over 20km of walking, we were pretty exhausted and fell asleep after a long round of Phase 10. On Day 2, we explored Footscray first, visited the Shrine of Remembrance, and then hurried in the rain to an escape room, which we solved with 7 minutes remaining. In the evening, we met Dom and Esra for delicious fish and chips. The weather on Day 3 was not much better, and we took a trip to Box Hill for a tasty lunch and on the way back, we stocked up on provisions to start our road trip the next day. Unfortunately, Ponyo got into a minor scuffle and gave another car a little smack. Not much happened, but the deductible must still be paid to the insurance. In order not to leave the cozy warm apartment in the evening, we ordered a delicious pizza.

Day 4: We left the city early in the rain, which was supposed to last for hours. Except for a short, freezing stop for lunch, we just kept driving. Once we arrived at the coast, the weather still wasn't better, but we discovered a few dolphins at a lookout point, happily jumping around (at least it looks like it). That was the absolute highlight of the day. Despite the weather (the rain slowly subsided), we decided to camp for the night and drove to a free spot by the sea - the way there was quite adventurous and with Mathias' help, Ponyo once again showed what she can do. But it was worth it again, after setting up the tent, we walked over a sand dune onto a huge, long beach. Pretty frozen, we returned to the tent after a while, where Mathias cooked a delicious soup for us and we started another round of Phase 10 until shortly after, all flashlights gave up and we had no choice but to go to bed at 8 pm. We were in for a long and especially cold night, and during cold pee breaks, we could see a beautiful starry sky again.

Day 5: Still frozen and rather worn out from the night, but with sunshine, we started our next day of driving, which had a lot in store. After a round of hot drinks and taking down the tent, we were on our way again. At noon, we could have our lunch in a nice spot in the sun. As we usually do, we didn't take the most direct route to Canberra. So our route took us through part of the so-called Snowy Mountains, which we didn't really believe at first. We kept seeing cars coming towards us with skis, snowboards, and even snow on their roofs. For us, it remained with small patches of snow, which was funny after 1 1/2 years without snow. We drove through a national park with unpaved roads, where Schtä and Luki finally got to see their first kangaroos, first dead ones and then lively, hopping ones. We also saw lots of wombats, but unfortunately only dead ones - we can hardly wait to see a living one, they are so cute. It was getting late and we were afraid of running over one of the animals, but luckily we made it to the city before dark, where we moved into another apartment and went to sleep soon after ordering food.

Day 6: We heard that Canberra is not supposed to be the greatest city, but as the capital, we still wanted to come here. Our first destination was the Parliament Zone, where all government buildings and some museums are located. It's all very spacious and not particularly exciting. Since many of the museums in Canberra are free, we decided to visit the National Gallery of Australia, which was definitely worth it. After a late lunch, some shopping, and a few more impressions of the city, we returned to our home where we spent the rest of the day.

Day 7: We set off early to reach our destination for the day - Sydney. We had planned several stops, for example, some of the famous Big Things - the absolute highlight of the day was probably the Big Potato. After an Australian pie for Schtä and Luki, the next stop was a treetop walk that gave us incredibly beautiful views of the coastline and some shaky knees from the height. We were back by the sea at lunchtime, and it's hard to believe how pleasantly warm it was by now. The rays of the sun are very good for all of us. We had our lunch with a very nice view. Our big jar of pickles is almost empty, and the first tube of Lustenauer mustard is already emptied. Our GPS annoyed us a lot for the next few hours and led us into a few stupid situations, but in the end, we arrived in Sydney and saw some great things.