The last three weeks

Hello everyone,

I'm writing from the small town of Airlie Beach. Since we've been traveling a lot lately and often don't have good internet, I haven't had a chance to update you on our journey. Here's a little summary of the past 21 days: On January 4th, we left our house and rented a Wicked Camper for the next month. With our car, we (Jil, Anton, Olga, Nati, and I) are driving up the coast until Cape Tribulation in January. The first night we spent at a not very nice rest area in the beautiful Blue Mountains. After a short hike the next day, we drove from the inland to the coast towards Newcastle. After a day in the port city, we spent the next night in Port Macquarie, where we met our friends Fabio and Raphael again. In Port Macquarie and Hat Head National Park, we found unusually long and wide beaches that were completely empty and beautiful. After another night, we continued on January 8th. Our next destination was the hippie town Byron Bay on the north coast. We stayed 15 minutes outside of Byron in Lennox Head for 5 days. Mom's friend has a large horse farm here and a caravan in the yard where we slept. In Byron itself, we surfed for the first time, strolled along the very cute beach promenade, and celebrated Jil's birthday at a silent disco on the beach. From Byron, we made a day stop at Rainbow Camp and then headed to the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise before reaching the next big city, Brisbane. Here, we stayed with a former colleague of my mom and her very nice family. On a huge property, we could enjoy ourselves for two more days and let them show us the best sights of Brisbane after our pool time. On the second day, we met the other Berliners again, so we extended our stay for another two nights. To enjoy luxury one more time, we stayed with friends of Jil's a little further north of Brisbane. A very nice and hospitable couple who want to move to Germany at the end of this year. After saying goodbye to Trevor, Maggi, and Olga, our road trip continued north. However, the next three days were characterized by many hours of driving, as we had to cover 1100 km in three days through absolute emptiness to Airlie Beach, and that at a maximum speed of 100 km/h on the highway. During a longer stop in Bundaberg, we visited our first wildlife park, where we held snakes, fed kangaroos, and cuddled koalas.