Beach, local wildlife and AFC Champions League

From morning until noon, it went from Byron Bay to the next stop on my 33-day route: Surfers Paradise, a suburb of the Gold Coast. Here you can do one thing really well: spend money! But of course, only if you want to 😆 And since I didn't want to, I missed out on the many amusement parks and activities - especially since I had already done the activities that would have been interesting to me and had already been to enough amusement parks - so there wasn't much left for me. So I spent the 1.5 days I had there mainly in the pedestrian zone and on the beach, taking it easy. There aren't many hiking opportunities in a city where skyscrapers reach all the way to the beach. However, on my second day, I discovered a slightly quieter area where there was even a bit of green and no hordes of tourists. The sunset and simultaneous moonrise on the beach with a view of the ocean was also great, with the moon slowly but surely climbing higher and higher in the background, while it got darker and darker. The colors in the sky were really amazing to see 😊 In the evenings, there was a VERY inexpensive barbecue at my hostel, which I naturally helped myself to. On my first evening, I talked to Henry for quite some time, who had also spent six months in New Zealand before, of course, finishing school last year and, as you can guess, comes from Baden-Württemberg 😉 To be precise, from Heidelberg. On the second evening, I watched some people play beer pong before moving on to a round of giant Jenga, where each block had a task written on it that had to be fulfilled, e.g. exchanging clothes, drinking (which happened very often 😂), or telling a story. It was quite fun, but overall, I have to say about Surfers Paradise: if you have money to spare, it can be a lot of fun to be there - if not, you can actually skip this stop.

However, my next stop should definitely be worth it: Brisbane, the third largest city on the east coast. I arrived in the afternoon and spent much more time than I would have liked at Peterpans, my travel agency, with which I had booked my tour. There were things that needed to be rebooked because of Debbie, who had caused some damage. Just a little side note: Debbie is not a person, but the cyclone that ravaged Australia shortly before I arrived here 😂😂 Once that was finally taken care of, I went for a walk along the city river and saw, among other things, the library, a small park, a Nepalese pagoda, and a man-made beach with a pool. On the way back, when it was already dark, I walked through the shopping center and straight to the hostel, where I only stayed for a few minutes before heading back to Peterpans, this time to participate in a group activity with drinks and pizza. The first person I talked to was Calvin, once again a freshly graduated high school student and of course from...Stuttgart! We all know which state that's in 😉 But there were many others on the pub crawl, many from Germany, but also many from England. After we got our pizza in the first bar, there was a game for all guests in the second bar: music bingo 🎶📄 Each person was given a card with 25 songs on it. Then, various songs were played for a few seconds each, and you had to cross them off your card one by one. Unfortunately, I had only crossed off about half of them when someone actually came forward whose card had been completely played. Tough luck, but the prizes weren't that great anyway 😜 After that, four of us went on stage, and we all had to blow up a balloon until it burst. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me, as my balloon was eventually filled with so much air that it slipped out of my mouth and flew across the room 😅 A short time later, one of us actually managed to make the balloon burst. Oh well 😎 Anyway, after that, we went to the third and final bar, where there was a drag show that day, so there were several trannies walking around the place, two of whom were hosting some games. But I had had enough of games and just watched. It was funny at times, but it didn't really impress me. There was occasional good music in between, and time passed relatively quickly before I finally went back to the hostel shortly after midnight.

The next day came, and with it one of the absolute highlights of my trip so far. I had already bought a ticket for the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary the day before, where, as the name suggests, there are many koalas. But of course, that's not all. In principle, it's a wildlife park with local, i.e. Australian animals. You can see kangaroos, snakes, dingoes, birds of all kinds, wombats, lizards, crocodiles, bats, Tasmanian devils, but also ordinary sheep. The only typical Australian animal that's missing is spiders. My first destination after arriving, however, was the number one tourist attraction in this park: a photo with a koala. This park certainly makes a lot of money from that. But I was happy to spend the $20 just for the photo, especially since it's comparatively very cheap. Once the line in front of me finally came to an end, everything went very quickly. I was guided to a marking, had to stand on it exactly, then put my hands together, and then a keeper quickly came with the koala, who should leave a permanent mark with me 😉 My specimen was relatively small and light, and oh so cute ❤🐨 At first, he didn't want to cooperate and kept looking in the direction that the camera wasn't waiting. But then it worked out, and as soon as the photo was taken, he was already taken away from me. Too bad, I would have liked to have him with me a little longer 😔 But the next visitor was already waiting for him. I didn't want to pay the additional $20 for a print version of the photo and was satisfied with the online version, which you can of course find in the picture gallery 😊 After that, I went on a tour of the park, where I could admire the animals I mentioned earlier. Some of them I had never seen before, like the dingoes or the platypus, the only mammal in the world that lays eggs (inside joke: no, it's not the hippopotamus 😂😜😂😜😂😜). But somehow, the wombats impressed me the most because I thought they were so cute as they strolled somewhat clumsily through their enclosure 😍 The cassowary, which makes quite an impressive picture, was surprisingly large. But it can certainly also be very dangerous. Anyway, after getting my bearings, I went to a small bird show, which was very short but still well done. Four birds were presented, including the impressive white-bellied sea eagle. The moderators entertained us by letting the birds fly a few centimeters above the heads of the spectators. But they didn't come to me 😐 After that, there was another show where a dog herded a flock of sheep through three obstacles and into the "stall" without any help. That was also nice to watch. Afterwards, I continued my tour and spent several hours in the park. Another attraction of Lone Pine is that you can enter the kangaroo enclosure and pet and feed them. I didn't want to miss out on that, just like some more or less successful snapshots 😄 I was surprised how trusting these animals were. By the way, two females had a young one in their pouches 😊 In the same enclosure, there were also emus, and of course I also "visited" them, as you can see in the pictures. Towards the end, there was another attraction for all visitors: feeding the lorikeets. We were allowed to participate as visitors. We just had to hold a bowl of food up in the air. It was quite funny. When I arrived at the designated spot, there was no bird to be seen and it was pretty quiet. But as soon as the keeper started filling the bowls with food, little green birds suddenly came shooting in from all directions, causing the noise level to rise significantly. They had hidden really well before. After a few minutes, I was allowed to pick up a stick with a bowl of food on it, and within a few seconds, five birds were sitting on it. To my dismay, some others settled on my head, which wasn't exactly pleasant 😆🐦 At least they didn't mistake my hair for food and start pecking at me 😅 But of course, it was still a lot of fun. Just as the bus was about to leave, the rain started to come down quite heavily. Good timing 👌 The return journey didn't go exactly as planned, as we were stuck in traffic. The reason was an AFC Champions League match between Brisbane Roar and the Kashima Antlers from Japan in the evening, which caused slightly increased traffic. I had actually planned to watch this game. However, this plan was in danger, as we only arrived in the city half an hour before kickoff. So the goal was to quickly get to the hostel, drop off my things, and then head to the stadium. I arrived at the stadium just as the game was starting, bought a ticket, and went to my seat (for those who - even though I don't understand it 😜 - don't like football -> last paragraph). When I got my first overview of the entire stadium, I was surprised: the stands were frighteningly empty! Later, it was announced that a total of 5,567 spectators had found their way to the venue. In a Champions League game! In Germany, you might see those kinds of attendance numbers in the third division. This once again shows how unimportant football is in Australia. But the good thing was that I had more or less free choice of seats because of that. So during halftime, I was able to sit in a seat on the main stand near the halfway line without disturbing anyone 👍⚽ By the way, Brisbane has had a now 36-year-old German player in their squad for seven years, who even had a movie made about him: Tom Meets Zizou - not a summer fairy tale. His name is Thomas Broich, and he is one of the stars of the team. I saw several fans wearing his jersey in the stands. He never really became happy in the Bundesliga (played for Borussia Mönchengladbach, Cologne, and Nuremberg). When asked why he chose to go to Australia of all places, he once replied: "I wanted to get as far away as possible." What's the name of my blog again? 😂😂 Anyway, he also played on this day, for a good 85 minutes. Considering the low attendance, the atmosphere during the game wasn't actually that bad. On one side, there were the "ultras" of the home team, who sang a few songs behind the goal, and on the other side, there were about 100, at most 150 Japanese fans who sat together and cheered their team on with enthusiastic drum beats throughout the entire game 🔊 Unfortunately, without success, as could be seen in the end. The game itself wasn't particularly good in terms of quality. A defensive error and a lucky goal from a completely botched free kick gave Brisbane a 2-0 lead before it got exciting again 10 minutes before the end and the score became 2-1. But Roar held on for the win. It was even a relatively surprising win. After all, they had beaten the league leaders after two losses in three games without scoring a single goal. And at least now I can say that I have seen a Champions League game. Even if it turned out a little differently than I had imagined 😜⚽

On Maundy Thursday, I still had until noon to explore the city a bit, so I set out to visit another botanical garden and then walk along the Brisbane skyline on the way back. It was sunny, and the few hours were quite nice. Then it was time to catch the bus that would take me to Noosa. Later, one of the biggest adventures of my trip so far would begin. You'll find out more in the next report, which hopefully all of you will read. It's worth it! 😊

Until then, 👋

Your Max