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We have just arrived in Brisbane and are enjoying our first Foster's on the balcony of our hotel. Few thoughts:

- Singapore Airline is the best.airline.ever.
- When else do you watch at least 6 movies within 24 hours?
- I can't believe I'm updating the blog only two hours after landing...

Other than that, I most excited about the prospect of not having to wear socks for the next ten months.

Cheers
Sala

BYO is a strange yet interesting concept. BYO is short for "bring your own" and it refers to the fact that many restaurants in Australia don't have a licence to sell alcohol, so you can bring your own. I will have to get used to the idea to buy my beer in a store and then bring it to the restaurant, but why not?

We will stay in Brisbane until the 9th of May, and then we will head north with a wicked camper. It's hot here (29 degrees celcius forcasted for tomorrow), but we're not complaining. Just saying.

...for the bus. We're starting to feel a little stuck in Brisbane, but next wednesday we will finally pick up the camper. We've joined CouchSurfing today because that seems to be an excellent idea.

Visited Mount coot-tha yesterday, the highest "mountain" in the area (287 meters!), where we finally learned how to spot the Southern Cross (Crux australis), a star constellation that tells you where to find south (only visible in the southern hemisphere).

Most importantly, we finally have prove that the draining bathtub story is a myth. Here in the hotel, the water drains counterclockwise - if the Coriolis effect was really the reason, it should run clockwise in the southern hemisphere. Duh.

Finally, we've spent our first day at the beach. Brisbane is not exactly a city by the ocean, so we went on a day trip to a place called Surfers Paradise (nice name) which is about one hour south of Brisbane. It's basically Australia's answer to Miami Beach. Once a village with a single hotel (only 70 years ago), this is what it looks like today:

That, by the way, is the view from Q1 tower, apparently the largest residential building in the world. Quite impressive.

Tomorrow, we're going to drive to Agnes Water. What looks like a short distance on the map turns out to be a seven hours drive from Brisbane. Guess we have to get used to these distances...

And always in Rahel's backpack: the three musketeers. From left to right: Jean-Jaques, Suapali and Cojojo.

Yesterday, we arrived in Yeppoon, where Anthony White took us to the horse races which was a lot of fun (not so much financially though... ;-). We're currently staying with Anthony and Leanne in Yeppoon.

A couple of days ago, we finally got our Wicked camper van. The van we were supposed to get was involved in an accident on that very day, and what seemed to be bad luck at first turned out to be good luck: The guys at Wicked Campers gave us a 4WD bush camper van for the same price, and that car is so much better than the one we were supposed to get. 4WD means we can drive the car on dirt roads, a feature we will certainly make use of.

On the way up to Yeppoon, we saw our first kangaroo.Unfortunaltely, it was dead. Since then we've seen a lot of them, and most of them were alive. Apparently, swerving for kangaroos is a bad idea. Our camper has stickers all over saying "don't fucking swerve for kangaroos or you will roll BAD!!!" or "If you swerve for kangaroos you're a DICKHEAD you will roll four times... Who will survive this drive... the emu... the roo... or you... Program your mind to survive this drive." Oh well.

Today we've seen the first Tarantula, in Anthony's house. It was kind of cute, but he killed it anyways.

The weather has been a bit ugly recently, some showers and mostly cloudy, but at 26 degrees it's not so bad. We're now at the southern border of the Great Barrier Reef, and we can't wait to go out there.

Please keep on commenting, we'd love to hear back from you (no matter what language)!

We're enjoying ourselves here in Yeppoon and think we will stay another week. Anthony and Leanne are great hosts, we feel perfectly at home.

Three days ago I did my first surfing ever, and it was a lot of fun. The day after we went fishing on a boat, but apart from a small shark, nothing would bite. Yesterday we've stayed with another of Anthony's friends who has a great selection of very nice wines, and we spent the night drinking excellent wine and a 1979 Port from Australia (which was outstanding). Now we've just come back from another sunny day at the beach, eating tiger prawns and waiting for the sun to go down because that is when we will head for a BBQ at another of Anthony's friends. Life is good here ;-)

While the weather has been superb this week, some bacteria decided to have a get-together in my throat. Result: four days in bed with fever. Solution: Antibiotics (described by a Swiss doctor - small world). Seems to work, but still not feeling 100%. Whatever. As a sticker in our Wicked Camper says: Life is what's happening to you while you are busy making other plans (courtesy of John Lennon).

For revenge, we will have an action packed weekend, with Crocodile Farm Tour tomorrow (including Crocodile Steak Lunch), and Sailing to Keppel Island on Sunday. On Monday, we will leave Yeppoon and head north to the apparently most beautiful part of Queensland, the Whitsunday Islands.

By the way, our email addresses during this trip are salathe.marcel@gmail.com and rahel.salathe@gmail.com. Not sure how long our ETH addresses will be active.

Cheers,
Sala

As my internet connection dies in 9 minutes, here is a very quick update. More to follow soon, including pics (promise).

Crocodiles are fantastic animals, especially behind fences. Croc meat is excellent, a bit like chicken. After leaving Yeppoon, we headed north to Eungella National Park, a wonderful cloudy rainforest. It's a great place to spot Platypus, an amazing animal endemic to Australia (check Google or Wiki for more). They are very shy, but decided to show up for two patient Swiss biologists.

We then headed north to the beatiful Whitsunday Island, a collection of about 74 Islands. We're currently staying at a Caravan Park in Airlie Beach. Tomorrow we are going to explore some of the Islands, kayaking and snorkeling.

Time's up. Ok, that's it for today. I'm well again, and so is Rahel. As I said, more updates soon. Ciao a tutti!!!