MC Abhi organized one more party at my beach house this last week-end!

Quality time, food, sport, surf, fun, etc.. on the menu!

Instead of scratching my head for comment I will just put some pictures!

Abhi, Amy, Patrick, Yashun, Andrew

Abigail and Tamline

Wang Li and Yashun

Me, working hard

Mario, with a “special” look! hehe…

Come Barbie, let’s go Party, mm… Amy, Yashun, Wang Li, Patrick, Christian

Amy, Abi (funnily Abhi is Amy’s boyfriend, so you could make some pun about Abi and Abhi! )

Byron light house, with some people…

Some people are missing on the rare picture I have (because I’m lazy bastard and just ripped of, other people’s picture from Facebook album! ) so here I apologize to Kattie, Ilaria, Wlodeck, Ania, Claudia, Dan, Christian, Blain, and hu… that’s it I hope!

Yeah a 3rd blog entry in one day (after many months of silence)!
Anyway I had a French couch surfer girl coming here recently (Thanks Dan) (I’m French too, that helps). Anyway she took pictures of me surfing, so here we go, the proof I can do it!

Another pic, but not on the sea…

And a pic of Isabelle herself!

yeah the sea was pretty rough this day…

Claudia and Dan organized a BBQ at their place on Sunday 18 (today!) and I went there.

There was no frog at the barbecue, but last week I took this nice picture on my balcony which show one cute little local squatter:

At the BBQ there was Kelly (Kelly and me below)

After 4 years in Australia Kelly finally got the answer for her PR (Permanent Residence) application.
She got rejected!
She'll be back in China in one month (don't repeat anyone, it's a secret! she is so sad). Immigration law is one harsh aspect of life.. Ho well, I am planning to go visit her next year. While it's problematic for me to stay too long in the cities, as in more than one week, and as I fear she will probably be in one of those "small" 20 million Chinese country town! I plan to quickly head out for the real Chinese country side, of which I have already seen the nice holiday pictures from Sabrina!

Other than that it was a "disguised" Chilean barbecue (Claudia is from Chile)

Kelly, Claudia, Sabrina

Claudia and Patrick (Patrick is a real Austrian from the mountains!)

We had nice food, nice afternoon by the pool (ahum.. .Sabrina was thrown in the water by some evil Austrian (and German) ), and I met my new parents! (it's a private joke, nah, you can't understand, hehe..)

Well, I though it is long overdue that I blog about it, since I have been there for more than a month now, already had a house warming party and some late bill I haven't paid yet!

Well to begin it is here (Google Map), one house away from the beach, amongst the tree.

Here is the house from the back, I live upstairs

The bed room, just after having received my furniture

It's very good because there is a big hill between the house and the high-way, and the ocean is on the other side, making the air quite clear, hence good for my affliction / health problem with car pollution.

On the other hand I work only one road away from the high-way. Fortunately it is the country side, but it's still (but just a little but) bad. However the boss is OK for me to work from home on the afternoons. I started to do it this week and that's it, it's globally (finally, at long last) good, great!
And the going on from work to home takes only 4 minutes, so it's no bother at all!

Here my workplace from outside

I don't have daylight beach picture , but I guess an evening picture would give a good idea too

I have only swim when other people came to see me so far. The temperature is starting to be alright, I mean not exactly warn, but not really freezing either, somewhere in between.

Next month I plan to buy a surf board and go for a surf in the (every?) morning before work!

As I said I had a nice house warming party last week, with heaps of friend from Brisbane. No local unfortunately. I don't really know any that well so far, I hope that will come!

Anyway, thanks to my well connected friend Abhi, there was heaps of cute German girl, which was all the better. We swam, cook and eat, played some games and visited Byron.

Here, some of us are dozing in the morning sun on the balcony

From left to Right: Rebecca, Me, Lena, Abhi, Sabine.

We had a nice home made "feast" Saturday night. We did my concept Tortillas / Mexican roll.
Basically I bought some Tortillas bread, prepared some "dip" and that's it. The dip are all from various origin, that's the twist! While I prepared some: red bean in tomatoes, home made guacamole, home made raita / tatsiki, schredded "tasty cheese" and sour cream. Sabrina prepared some Chinese style steamed fish with soya sauce, ginger and (garden) chili. River prepared some Chinese tomato omelette and Elizabeth brought a salad.

(Left to right: Abhi, Me, Elizabeth, River)

And here, morning party! (don't believe all what you see! )

Left to right, I mean left, down, up, right: River, Amy, Abhi, Sabrina, Patrick

Of course we also went to Byron's Light house, the most easterly point of mainland Australia, I know, it's an amazing fact!

From left to right: Ruth, Christina, Lena, Abhi (and the light house) and Rebecca.

What else?
The house has no washing machine nor any where to plug one, a little bit of a nuisance, I should talk to the owner about it! (He had some plan to build a little laundry shack downstairs...)

Ho, well I'm also trying to become a local!
Little success so far, but I'm doing the self defense stuff on Monday and Friday night, it's excellent. I did Volley Ball at Brunswick Head for a few Tuesdays already. I was lukewarm about it and last Tuesday there was some better player than me and bully who though that good team work from me was to stay in the corner. After much internal debate about screwing him up or leaving, I thought I might give a try to Sassy Salsa instead as well as the "Boxersize" on Wednesday night at Billinudgel Fitness factory. The instructor is a very good looking typical Australian woman (tall, blond, strong, you know the type) but I am not sure it is fun.. ho well, there is only women going there, can't be bad!

Also, and nothing to do with my new house, but as I did some "meditation" with Abhi (some quick "Om" séance in impromptu place at unexpected times) I want to share this picture of him which show his amazing spiritual power!

Abhi got the Power!

Namaste!

Yep, I know, so many good songs!

Miley Cyrus, See you again.

OK, she works for Walt Disney and the clip is crappy, but the music good, I reckon!

Hey, hey, listen, I know I should really blog about my new super duper cool house by the ocean, but hey I have been, ahum.. cough, so busy!
Well in fact it's true. Yesterday I slept until noon which was followed by social tennis all afternoon and today, frustratingly, I watched a movie and bush-walked all day long in Mount Tambourine with beautiful single girls from Brisbane and Abhi. It's  frustrating because they are from Brisbane... Ho well, working on meeting locals as well...

OK, lazy I confess, but it will come soon!

Meanwhile enjoy this nice picture from just over the corner:

Clever, had they been writing "forbidden to walk on the dune" I would have feel secretly tempted, maybe I would even have done it on a moonless night, when no-one was watching.

But now it feels good to just not walk on the dune, I'm actually helping the environment with my not walking action!
If need be I'm ready not to do many other things as well!

Yesterday, after work, I went for a walk on the beach. After all I'm just one house away from it so I should enjoy it more!
Anyway, I found out that the water temperature is starting to be acceptable. Ho, and by the way, there was a couch on the beach, just like that!
How bizarre and wonderful isn't it?

After 7 and half happy month in Darwin I was on the move again. Unfortunately while Darwin was much better for my health, it was still not good enough. Because of that I found and got (Yeaah!) a great new job in Billinudgel. A small village somewhere on the Australian coast 150km south of Brisbane. That's kind of an amazingly good opportunity. And a perfectly Lloyd friendly place too, so... here we are again!

I said again because, after growing up on the french riviera, I did many move in the past. 1998: Paris (with 1 month in New York in 2000), 2002: Sydney, 2005: Brisbane, January 2008: Darwin, August 2008: Billinudgel, hopefully I'll stay there for a much longeeeer while!

By the way, before I "leave" Darwin, here is the jade Buddha that looked over my Travel, thanks Huisze , I think I quite liked it and gives some personality to my car as well!

Saturday morning, everything packed, I left my Darwin home for the last time, it was 10:05! I did stop by the Parap market for a last papaw salad and then I hit the road for a 3800 km journey.

In the middle of winter temperatures in Darwin go from 18 degrees (at night) to 28 degrees (during the day), it's still quite warm. The water temperature might be around 26 (just an educated guess) and the country side is dry and prone to bush fire. More than that ranger have burnt many patch of ground to prevent bigger fire later, that gave the territory its dry season look.

I confess, I'm dramatizing a little, it's not always as bad as this picture!

I quickly reached Katherine's Gorge, it's still green and lush but so much less, here take a look

Katherine's gorge in the Wet season

Katherine's gorge in the dry season

Once out of Darwin past Katherine one is quickly in the middle of a dry and green nowhere. I had an uneventful 1000 km drive south until the first left turn at Three ways, the most famous T intersection of the Northern Territory .

Here is Three ways road house, which has a nice and cheap burger with chips. But petrol was the most expensive of my trip, a bit more than $2 per litter.

And the famous T intersection.

As I dived in the Australian outback I got more and more alone. After Three ways I had to drive about 450 km before being able to refuel. The average town has just a couple of hundred people. And often all one can find is a road house and its petrol station.

On the second day I crossed the NT state border back to Queensland, there isn't much to see there.

And I slept in Mount Isa. A mining town in a calderas like formation on top of some hill range in the middle of the Australian outback. It's easily one of the biggest town around with the most hospitable surrounding, thanks to its mountainous location.

And then I drove on and on again. At some stage I had the feeling I reached the closest place to nowhere as can be reached with the high way. Somewhere... on the road, 600km west of Townsville.

I guess it can be more impressive in the rocky desert in South Australia, I have to try that one day. But that was pretty isolated. I started to feel better around there, on my 3rd day of the trip (you know, I have this problem with pollution, a few days in the outback worked wonder for me).

300 km from Townsville it suddenly start to get greener and lush. There was flowering Mimosa all around, that was nice

I slept before Townsville in a road house. By then I was getting used to long drive and woke up early. I hit the road at 4:30AM on my fourth day. That was the first time I saw fog in Australia (I'm not much of an early riser hey), more than seeing it, I had to drive through it for a while, can't see much, it was interesting!

I by-passed Townsville and drove to Airlie beach (aka Whitsundays), I though I had to stop there. There are heaps of hills and farms, it's all green and you do wonder where the beach can be until it suddenly appears. Very nice spot, a bit like Nice (in France) but with less people and more greeneries, maybe warmer as well!

I was making good progress until.... it was 3pm and there was an accident on road, a big one: 2 trucks and a car somehow collided. Here you can see the rescue helicopter.

I was stranded on the spot until 6:30pm, that made me a little cranky after that I made godspeed to Billinudgel. Not much else to say on the trip as I was just hurrying up. Except, perhaps, that Gladstone does seems to be a Lloyd friendly town, I'm sad I failed a job interview for a job there back in December now, ha well.
Finally I managed to arrive in Brunswick Head (next to Billinudgel) next day (Wednesday) around 7pm.

In Billinudgel it is winter. Day temperature is around 13 degrees (at least it was yesterday), very much cooler than Darwin, that's a bit of a shock. I have been told it's one of the coldest winter in a while. Although water temperature is currently much warmer. About 20 degrees or so apparently (some locals told me). I rented a holiday accommodation in South Golden Beach (still there by the way) and about 15 Brisbane friend came to see me the first week-end. And slept in the house.

As it's only one sand dune away from the beach, we had to ... go in for swim!

Well, once you are inside, it's ok!

My employer found for me a house to rent in the suburb next door: New Brighton (in a couple of days, there is still some renovation work going on as we speak), that's a great Lloyd friendly place with The shop close by (Amazing no?) and on the sea shores, I think it'll be good!

And that's it for now, see ya!

I drove to Darwin, I think it was from the 14th to the 17th of January 2008.
I was working there until... the 1st of August 2008 (and I hit the road next day, to Billinudgel!!)

But I thought hey, I should have a little summary of my adventure in Darwin, this is quite a uniquely beautiful place after all!

One of the first thing that most Australian will notice are the days, they are long! From 6AM to 7PM everyday of the year. There is a small variation but it's small! Now I'm writing that from South Golden Beach and it's pitch black at 6PM, it's... strange... (It's also cold, but with a jumper it's much better!)

Darwin has 2 seasons, the wet and the dry. The wet is the summer and it's hot, very hot, and it rains a lot, in a sporadic fashion. When it rains more than 2 days the temperature is good and, in fact, people do walk around even under the drenching rain. The only problem is that you get completely soaked in 30 seconds but hey, it's not cold! just right!
Twice I had one week of non stop rain sometimes between January to April, that was nice to see that much water after many years of drought in Brisbane!

The dry season is winter, it goes from April to, mm, possibly October I have been told. And it doesn't rain, at all. It's endless blue sky. In August nights might be as cold as, hu, 18 degrees? At least just when I left we had that cold a night. But days are still warm and nice while the water temperature is maybe only 24 degrees. At the start of the dry it's around 30, and there are many waterfalls and lakes around with warm water, that's glorious! You just have to stay clear of the (possibly jumping) crocodiles!

Here I am in Litchfield with a free warm water massage, ha the hard life we had!

It's also the time of Mindill beach market. There are many very popular market in Darwin. Most of them for food and local craft produce! Here, in the background, you can see Parap's Saturday morning market (And some local celebrity in the foreground! hehe, it's my friend Sabrina for those who don't know her, with a delicious Tropical whip: Coconut milk, pineapple, and a bit of honey)

Mindill beach market is the biggest event, but it only happen during the dry season Thursday and Sunday nights. And there are musician, beach volley and many other activities.

Surprisingly there are many things to do in Darwin for those who know how to look! I went (although I was kind of slack) to a Salsa dance school (and there is Salsa music every Wednesday nights at Monsoon), there are heaps of free tennis court all around, plenty of cheap lap swimming pool, here is Nightcliff's one:

I'm not really pub minded but there are heaps of them in "CBD" and heaps of delicious restaurant as well, I really like the "Magic Wok" in the city and the Wharf's food courts. I think food in Darwin is a tad more expensive but often of very good quality.

In Darwin real estate is expensive and competitive. I had a hard time finding something I liked but found it I did! It was a tad expensive ($300 pw) but it was a great flat in a block of 12, with swimming pool, surrounded by lush vegetation and not far from Nightcliff market.

Around Darwin there are mostly 2 big places people visits: Litchfield and Kakadu. There are also numerous smaller one, but those 2 are the biggest attractions. On the way to Kakadu there is the Adelaide river cruise showing off jumping crocodiles 4 times a day:

Many crocodiles there, don't go for a swim! Although, maybe, if you poke it in the eye it would leave you alone, but only true blue Aussie should attempt to do that!

A few Brisbane friend came to visit me. First there was  Marie, Siwan and Daniela. Here is Daniela in front of a termite mound on the way to Litchfield.

Litchfield is cool and only about 90 minutes drive from Darwin, many (crocodile free)(warm) water fall and rivers, great day out!

Well to be honest I didn't know those 3 before. One day while I was shopping I had a call from Dan in Brisbane and he told he was sending 3 quality couch surfing girl at my place to visit Darwin, hey sweet!

After that Kelly and Sabrina came too

they also visited Kakadu and had great fun (and met some cool Danish guy, hehe).

And finally Maria came
 
And we visited Kakadu together  but alas I have no picture! But let me tell you, it's worth it, it's real cool err, I mean warm. With heaps of remote and inaccessible warm lake which you can only reach by walking hours through mosquito, crocodile and drop bear infested jungle with huge venomous spiked vines blocking the way, err you get the idea. Although I might have exaggerated a bit...

Other than that it took a little while but in only 7 and half month I manage to make a few good friend. It all started with tennis, I met this Indian guy Prashant an enthusiast tennis player. I met him at the social tennis Friday night. For 3~4 month we kind of play together almost everyday. I improved a lot hey! Then he introduced me to some Malaysian / Singaporean people with whom I played basket ball.

They were very cool. One of them, the beautiful and charming Huisze kind of liked me one can think, had I not being sick and leaving, a nice story might have happened. As it is there is already something to tell, she often invited me in their house she was sharing with her 7 other Malaysian / Singaporean flat mates and I tasted delicious vegetarian Malaysian food:

I even learned a simple recipe I should try out soon. Roasted diced pumpkin, crunched peanut and soya sauce.
Speaking of which Divia, Prahsant's wife, really help me improve my Indian cooking style, at least as far as raita and curry are concerned.

I also learn to play Chinese chess (that's Huisze in the back)(Amazing, no?!?)

And they gave me the whole Avatar series before I leave, wow, that's an awesome 60 fun episodes of a great fantasy anime tale! And a nice jade Buddha as well, hopefully it will bring me health, my biggest concern for the last 15 years. I have the feeling it's going to be good now. Ho and some nice relaxation music as well which was very helpful on the long way back to Billinudgel.

I also met Kevin, the opposite of me, born in France he came to Australia when he was a kid (while I was born in Australia and grew up in France), Lee (funny swearing welch Australian (or is it Scottish?)), Hosein, Hannah and a few other...

Here Kevin and Hosein playing tennis:

Ho and let's not forget Louis, a work colleague from Hong-Kong. He has one of those rare Hong-Kong passport which gave both Chinese and English citizenship and he just got Australian PR, argh, I'm jealous, he has 3 nationalities, I have only two!
He is also a great sailing fan, here is his boat:


Well, ... I think that's it for today, and sorry to all I forgot ...

PS (Pre Scriptum): Most picture are links to bigger picture, I thought it a good idea, tell me what you think!
Also, towards the end, I got lazy and just used the build in image editing / resizing feature of Live Writer, comment welcome too!

Recently I met Caroline in Alice Springs for a 3 days tour around Uluru (aka Ayer Rock) with a tour aptly named the Rock Tour. It cost us AU$ 295 for 3 days, 2 (cold) night out in a swag and food (plus the touring around as well, of course). It's cold in June, although the worst is August I have been told. That is, the worse cold, it's unbearably hot in summer.

First it should be known that Uluru is not the only "mountainous" formation sprouting in the middle of the desert. There are many of them, such as the Olgas or King's Canyon (maybe around here). We visited all three of them with this tour.

Plus Alice Springs itself is in a beautiful valley like settings with narrow high ridges all around.

I was to met Caroline and 2 of her friend Aurelie (Coming from France) and Charlene (coming from France as well, but she met Caroline in the Gold Coast where she was having long holiday) in Alice Springs, I was coming from Darwin, they from Melbourne, here they are:

Charlene left, Caroline top right and Aurelie bottom right. Before this trip I only knew Caroline, who I met while I was living in Brisbane. By the way this is a picture from Kings Canyon

The first picture I have of Alice Spring is ...

An elephant!

Ok, I confess, it is not really from Alice, it was Charlene's or Aurelie's pic from their previous excursion in some zoo down south, but I thought it would be a nice surprise!

First thing people should be warn of the winter in Alice Spring is cold. It was near zero, sure thing!

Anyway tour started at 6AM, followed by a long drive so we could finish our night. There was some surprise along the road, like those wild horses!

or some tamed "local chicken", best known as Emu.

First stop was King's Canyon, so named after a famous explorer's brother in law (or something like that, can't remember the particular, save that was a family story, nothing to do with the royal family, and that the famous explorer had no death in all his expeditions, quite a feat in his time).

So here we go some pictures of King's Canyon

From the start	Somewhere in the middle	Going down...

In our tour's group there wasn't much group spirit...
There was the following subgroups: us (me and the 3 French girls), 3 funny young German guy, 2 cute young German girls, a funny German couple, a single German guy (lots of German hey!), a nice Chinese woman who is also a lawyer currently working in Sydney, a Dutch girl (who was in the same class as Caroline!) and 6 Canadian people.

I (slowly) established some good contact with the Chinese woman, the cute German girls (BTW it's Kat(harina) with the shiny blonde hair on the right in right picture above) and the funny German couple.

Our first night (out, sleeping in a swag) was not really under the star, more like under the rain (ok, it rained only 5 minutes, but I had to complain! ) and it was quite cold... everybody was like a mummy hiding deep inside the swag..

Next day we visited the Olgas and walk at the bottom of Uluru.

Here is my first shot at Uluru (as you can see it's a big rock in the middle of the desert)

Here some picture of the Olgas:
 

From left to right Laura (the other cute German girl), the valley of the wind, "Pauline" (the Chinese woman) inside the Olgas. It's greened inside because of the shade and also because these mountainous formation capture whatever little cloud and humidity there is to capture.

Here a nice panorama from inside:

Then we drove back to Uluru

where our guide talked at length about Australia, the Northern Territory and the aboriginal way of life. Here is a map of the aboriginal tribe of Australia with our guide on the left and a Canadian girl on the right.

Here is a picture of our whole group in front of Uluru, you could find out most of the Germans, they are the one with a can of beer!

Then we went to our camp site, light a fire and cooked a beautiful kangaroo bolognese!

And slept under the pristine stars. The air was so pure (and cold), the milky way was so clear, I couldn't resist taking this beautiful shot

Ahum, ho well, the camera is not as good as the eye!

The last day, early rise to see the sun rise on Uluru, arguably the rock takes on nice color as the sun rise (or set).

From left to right, a bus full of enthusiastic early riser, the sun rise, the funny German couple doing batman, Kat and Sanne (the Dutch girl), me...

Then I was one of the few climbing Uluru!! yeah... err... well almost... I was also one of the few to chicken out halfway (I know, shame on me, boo )

1st: not even half-way! and then the olgas from Uluru.

Going down I took this soon to be famous Uluru panorama, now you're talking!

And then we went back, just a last stop to do some Camel riding...

That was it for the tour, although we had a nice evening with our new friend (the 2 cute German girls and the funny German couple)