Category: Australia

  • Die besten Bücher für, aus und über Australien

    Die besten Bücher für, aus und über Australien

    Ich suche vor jedem Auslandsaufenthalt Reiselektüren, die etwas mit dem Reiseland zu tun haben. Bei meinem einjährigen Australien-Abenteuer, auf langen Zugreisen, an einsamen Stränden und in langweiligen Outback-Hostels, hatte ich reichlich Zeit, haufenweise Bücher über Australien zu lesen. Manche haben mir geholfen, etwas über Australien, das Land, die Leute und die Geschichte zu lernen, andere…

  • Eurovision’s biggest Australian fan takes Austria

    Eurovision’s biggest Australian fan takes Austria

    Jason Watkins just had the most Australian moment. A fellow Eurovision fan showed him his coin-sized tattoo. Not one to miss a cue, Jason deadpanned, “You call that a tattoo? THIS is a tattoo,” revealing the letters E-U-R-O-V-I-S-O-N inked across his own arm, from elbow to wrist. A loyal follower of the song contest, Jason…

  • Girls and Queens compete for Eurovision Throne in Austria

    Girls and Queens compete for Eurovision Throne in Austria

    This time two years ago, an appearance by a bearded lady in a ballgown would have been quite an unusual sight. Before May 2014, even Vienna had only one Conchita Wurst. Now she is everywhere you look in the Austrian capital: co-presenting the Eurovision broadcasts, smiling from magazine covers, advertising products… and her voice greets…

  • My favourite place in Australia

    My favourite place in Australia

    One of the top questions I get asked about my year in Australia is “What’s your favourite place?” (Other popular questions include: “Did you cuddle a koala?” A: No! “Weren’t you scared of the spiders/crocodiles/snakes?” A: Much to my own surprise, not particularly. “Does the water really go down the drain the other way around…

  • Happy Aussie Christmas!
  • The South West

    The South West

    After the dream that was the crazy West Coast trip, the South West was always going to be a letdown. I debated stopping while I was on top, but the desire to “come full circle” won out in the end. If the deranged threesome that had accompanied me from Broome to Perth had been around,…

  • Fremantle

    Fremantle

    Fremantle is more like a suburb of Perth, but technically it’s a town in its own right and certainly different enough to deserve it’s own write-up. Going there is like a mini holiday by the sea, complete with amusement park, a pier with some of the best fish&chip shops (maybe this one, maybe another one…

  • Perth

    Perth

    Perth sometimes gets a bad rep and a lot of travellers skip it. I can kind of see why. For starters, it’s a hassle to get to. It was also a real backwater for many, many years. A city-sized village far away from everywhere, the (or at least one of the…) most remote city/es in…

  • The Principality of Hutt River

    The Principality of Hutt River

    I omitted one stop from my travel log on the West Coast trip. Clearly, that story is already long enough. Plus, we visited a separate country, which surely justifies a separate blog post. “A separate country?”, you ask? Indeed, just off the North West Coastal Highway Number One, a few kilometres off the main road,…

  • The Australian West Coast

    The Australian West Coast

    We half-heartedly searched for rideshares the whole week we were in Broome, but towards the end of the dry season and with cyclone season looming, they were slim pickings. There were, however, a lot of rental relocations, as everyone was trying to move their cars south asap. We finally settled on one of those and…