Encounter

Hah, I went to the RipCurl store to check out some clothes and had a little chitchat with the store assistant. After a while talking in English it turned out that she came from Turku in Finland and had been here for three months now. She didn't really understand it first when I changed my speech from English to Finnish which proofed we were both quite surprised. I haven't met really many Finnish around here, and to be honest, this wasn't the place I was expecting to see one. Well anyways she invited me to her birthday at her Bondi apartment on 13th of January but unfortunately I'll be gone by then.

When I started thinking about the finnish I've met, it turned out that I actually went out yesterday(excellent short time memory) with a finnish guy to check out some of the local pubs. Janne is a friend of my friend Topi, who I was travelling with in Bangkok.

I'm still staying in the Sydney central square YHA. There's probably a potential buyer coming to check out the surfboard which is on sale in the Ebay. It's nice and sunny at the moment and it doesn't seem that we're gonna get snow for the christmas.

Relaxing times

Well we didn't hit the town on weekend but I headed around 50kms from Sydney instead. I took a train to Epping where Mel picked me up with her parents car. It was great to see the tall Sebastian and Mel again. The last time I saw them was in Broome in NW Australia. We rode to Ash's parents house where I was happy to see Ash and her really stylish house. I also met Ash's really playful dog, Aussie Bulldog, Gracy. Gracy seemed to enjoy the same things as my sis's dog Nelli and I had to throw her ball for a while. We spent a really nice house evening by watching travel photographs and laughing about the all the crazy stuff we've been through.

On the morning Ash's mum came home and made us a bbq-brekkie(or brunch). With stuffed stomachs we then laid on the couches with Sebastian and just watched SkyTV's Simpsons marathon. After travelling a while, simple things make you feel like a king. The next night we spent in the Mel's parents house. This house is also really nice with two stories, a pool and a jacuzzi. I was also honoured to meet the house's gorgeous dog, Jackson. He's 13months old golden retriever and so full of energy. Mel's parents were having their wedding anniversary so they headed out for the night and we 'kids' just stayed in the house watching a movie and eating pizza. Mel invited me to his house for Christmas so I'm really happy that I don't have to stay in the hostel. Actually I might be heading there in couple of days already and stay there until I leave Sydney which is 3rd of January. Now I'm considering myself extra fortunate since finding accomodation in the Sydney for the New Year is nearly impossible or atleast ultra-expensive. I'm really looking forward for the million+ people party and the massive fireworks from the Harbour Bridge.

Farewells

After the last night out with Harri I had to say him and Nanna goodbye this morning. They left so early that I still had few hours to sleep in the hotel room before I got a call from a French guy who was interested in buying the van. Well he bought it and now I'm staying in the hostel with heaps of money again. I just should get some kind of order to all my stuff. Now I'm carrying a big rucksack, 8,6"(2,6m) surfboard and big bag with wetsuit and misc stuff. I'm backpacker again.

Mel and Ash are coming to Sydney this weekend and I'm probably heading out with them and couple of their mates. It's good to change some travel stories again!

Blue mountains and Northern beaches

I'm a little bit ashamed to write an entry with this topic and to be only spent a one night in the blue mountains area. The town called Katoomba is the gateway to the most visited places in the Blue mountains. We went to visit the Three Sisters lookout and, yes, the views were really superb. The horizon was coloured in blue and we were wondering is it really the vaporizing oil from the eucalyptus trees which causes this. After nice views I turned my van Lulu towards the Sydney and was about to complete my journey around Australia. We drove to the Mona Vale which is located in the Northern Sydney. There was a nice big4 caravan park just next to Narrabeen surf beach but I wasn't keen enough to go surfing to the crowds. We spent one day cleaning up the Lulu and now it's ready for possible buyers.


We are now staying in the Central YHA in the Sydney and I'm really astonished to think that I've now driven around Australia in 117 days which summed up to 22000kms in total with day average of around 190kms. Just in comparison I uploaded a picture with Australia and Europe in the same picture and the shortest air-distance from Helsinki to Sydney is 15000km.

My car, my home, my 1987 Toyota hiace is now for sale for only 2900aud. We're heading out tonight with Harri and I was thinking to order some champagne, sparkling wine or atleast imported beer to celebrate my expedition. Good job Lulu.

Wilson's Promotory, Lake's Entrance and Merimbula

We started driving towards Sydney from Phillip island and decided to follow the coast. We had our first night stop in the beautiful Wilson's Promotory which is pretty much the most Southern point in the Australian mainland. Even though there was quite strong onshore wind I had some luck with surf by waking up at 5:30am and getting few waves in the early morning. Harri had done some more surfing-prac on the previous evening and ended up cutting his angle with the fin of my minimal. Didn't need any stitches though so no worries. There was some bushwalking options and really nice beaches with squeaky sand in the WP national park but as we were in little bit of a hurry we didn't spend too much time to explore all of these.


The next day we travelled to the place called Lake's entrance and I was a little bit interested in the place called Red Bluff which should be good surfing spot on the area. Luckily there was a camping area just walking distance from the surfing beach and we spent there one night. In the evening we went to play some minigolf with Harri and he won the two tight games with his famous and incredible luck. After the exotic wakeup by the sound of Wonga pigeon, I had some nice surf in the morning again for a short time before the ocean got quite flat. There was some submerged rocks but the place wasn't as scary as the Flat Rocks in the Western Australia which I wrote about earlier. I could write here some philosophical thoughts about a man, ocean, surf and life in total but you'd only understand them by waking up early, and experiencing the rising sun and calm swell by yourself.

From Lake's Entrance we finally made our way to my home state, the New South Wales. We went through nicely sounding places like Eden and Pambula and decided to camp in the Merimbula on the Southern East coast. Surf was going to be flat for few days so I could concentrate on something else a while and we headed out with Harri. The only bar/nightclub in Merimbula was really booming and we pretty much left quite early back to the camping site. Next day the ocean was flat and we had to drive through all the famous surf places like Ulladulla, Jervis bay and Bateman's bay, sob.

Our first plan was to stop in the Wollogong and spend a big Saturday night out there but some mistakes in the map reading lead us all the way to the Blue Mountains and town called Katoomba. We arrived there 7:20pm just to find out that the check-in for the caravan park was already closed but we headed for the bushcamping instead. There's a bush camping area close to Ingar and it's accessible via 10km dirtroad. We arrived there during the dark and immediately spotted couple of not-the-smallest spiders which seemed to cause a little bit of nervousness. After a safety meeting we decided not to spend any more nights in the bush camping which suited me fine.

Penguin Parade!

I had to write the own entry for this one. The Penguin Parade, which literally means hundreds of small penguins coming out of the ocean and stumbling their way across the beach to their sand-dune burrows. It's really delightful sight but maybe even more spectacular is the actual tourist business around it. Besides the massive parking lots there's a huge penguin terminal for tourist where you can take photoshopped images of you and your family with the penguins. There's not any photographing in the actual beach so all the photo-mad Asians have to pick this option and pay. Well even though there were strict regulations about photographing we still saw some flashes and heaps of cameras around the beach and the boardwalks so that's about it. Oh yeah, and don't imagine that you can get onto the beach. There's a big stadium around the area where the penguins are landing so you can view them from the distance with hundreds of other tourists buzzing around. You can't probably miss some black suited businessmen having a quick glance at the penguins and so fitting perfectly in this environment.

Cape Woolamai in the Phillip Island

Phillip island is located around 130kms South of Melbourne and there's a bridge access to the island. In the Finland Phillip Island is probably best known of it's racing circuit where the Motogp is held. Finnish 125cc-driver Mika Kallio finished second there on September. There's some nice views around the island as you can see on the pic.
Well we didn't go there for the motogp but to see the surf and the masses of penguins. I had made some research about the surf locations beforehand and the place called Cape Woolamai, just south after the bridge, should offer the best surf in the island. We were lucky to have good offshore winds and nice swell when we arrived on the main beach at the Cape Woolamai. There was heaps of other surfers enjoying the nicely shaped waves but there was so many breaks that the big pack was divided nicely along the beach. I got some nice waves here with my minimal again and didn't find the locals too competitious either. I started to think that this would the perfect moment to change my board to about 7foot minimal which should be faster and easier to turn. I still find my 6.3" shortboard too hard to paddle to have fun enough in the water.

We also did quick surf check at the Smith's beach which is more like a family type. The swell was much smaller there and would be really good for beginners(Harri). Well as we already had stopped in Cape Woolamai I took Harri to practise standups in the whitewash there instead. I was standing in the water with my wetsuit on and giving Harri tips while he did some nice standups in the whitewash without any wetsuit. "It's like in Finland", he said when I asked about the water temp and he was the only one not to wear a wetsuit.

Buddy old pal

It was great to see my friend Harri again who I met in the Melbourne international airport. He's doing a world around trip through Singapore, Australia and Los Angeles/Las Vegas with his ex-girlfriend.. We have been here in Melbourne four nights now and spent one night at the Great Ocean Road. We spotted some roos doing big hops over the field fences on the way. There's spectacular ocean views with sheer cliffs along the road and also some surfing spots as well. We stopped on the Bells Beach in Torquay just to see that there wasn't the "The ultimate Wave", as seen in the Point Break(1991) movie. Today we went to the Melbourne zoo and spotted all the unique aussie animals; roos, emus, koalas, platypuses, freshies and wombats + many other animals.

Temperature and especially the nights have been quite cool lately and it feels more like the Finnish summer now. Well it's still spring here and it seems that it should be getting a little bit warmer on the beginning of the next week though. Harri has to get some information about his passport because he's not sure if he can enter US with his current passport which may not fulfill the 6-month expiry requirement. That's why we are still staying this night here in Melbourne but no worries since this is really groovy city. If everything goes ok we're leaving to Phillip island to check out the penguins and the surf tomorrow. Surf forecast predicts 1.5+ swell with offshore winds on the beginning of the week. Looks good and maybe I can get harri to stand on the surfboard as well! After that we're slowly making our way to Sydney through the Southern NSW.