Ecstatic dance and markers

I got a new hobby, painting on things.
it is so much fun.
Maybe i can make some money from it… lets see.

I also went to ecstatic dance today.
It is a place where people of all ages meet at 10:30 in the morning and dance for 2h.
Strange? Maybe unusual, but it is great. Like a club but at daytime and without the alcohol. It is called 5 rythms dance and is supposed to be a form of dance therapy because you get a little voice guidance from the DJ (she said she is not a dj 😉 ) concerning awareness to your body parts, emotions and some ideas and encouragement to try, like dancing with a partner.

It is a very cool platform, because you can just sit on the floor and wiggle around, shake, hop, jump, twist, shuffle, scream or just be an uncoordinated bundle of flesh and nobody judges you.
No peer pressure of who dances the nicest nor the fear of embarrassment in front of “future” partners.
People come to dance and vent nothing else.
Yay 🙂
So long
Ole
P.s.  a short little something 🙂

My neighborhood and the blue mountains

Hey ho

i moved to Coogee, 4minute walk to the beach.
It is very beautiful. To bad that it is so cold, and it started raining today… but in the morning you can sit by the beach.
It is wonderful to watch the waves crashing into the rocks and if you are lucky you see whales breaching through the sea.
You can put up your hammock in the trees and just enjoy life.
Last weekend i went sailing again, the boat “Mojo” looks like a spaceship and gets really fast. Our bowsprit broke while flying the kite/spinnaker so we lost the race. Next weekend it will be fixed and we will hopefully win!

The Beach next door

like a spaceship

the mojo

i carried most of this junk

my job as a plumber

and demolitionman

chillin

waves crashing, and wedding pie island in the back

the other side of the bay

these trees are fascinating

the trippy sculpture in the park

my home, bream st. 81

This weekend Rose and I went for a trip to the blue mountains. It is the mountain range just 1.5h west of Sydney and it is incredibly beautiful.
It is a place full with steep cliffs and waterfalls everywhere. We slept in our car, but it got soooo cold over night. It is winter here after all, and in the mountains it is even colder.
The next morning was so freezing my hands turned all numb. During the day however the sun came out and it became nice and warm.
We saw the 3 sisters, a rock formation with a special story:

Three sisters, Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo had a father who was a witch doctor.
His name was Tyawan.
Long ago there was a Bunyip who lived in a deep hole who was feared by all. Passing the hole was considered very dangerous, therefore whenever Tyawan had to pass the hole in search for food, he would leave his daughters safely on the cliff behind a rocky wall.
One fateful day, Tyawan waved goodbye to his daughters and descended down the cliff steps into the valley. Meanwhile at the top of the cliff, Meenhi was frightened by a large centipede which suddenly appeared before her. Meenhi took a stone and threw it at the centipede. The stone continued on its journey and rolled over the cliff, crashing into the valley below which angered the Bunyip.
The rocky wall behind Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo then began to split open and the three sisters were left stranded on a thin ledge at the top of the cliff.
All the birds, animals and fairies stopped still as the Bunyip emerged to see the terrified girls. As the Bunyip began to approach the girls, to protect them from harm, their father Tyawan used his magic bone to turn them into stone.
Angered by this, the Bunyip then began to chase Tyawan. Becoming trapped, in order to flee from the Bunyip, Tyawan changed into a magnificent Lyre Bird, yet in the process dropped his magic bone.
Tyawan and his three daughters were now safe from the Bunyip. Once the Bunyip had disappeared, Tyawan returned in search of his magic bone, yet this was never to be found.
The Lyre Bird has been searching for this magic bone ever since. Remaining in rock formation, The Three Sisters stand silently overlooking the valley hoping that one day he’ll find the bone and turn them back to former selves.
When visiting The Three Sisters, if you listen carefully you may be able to hear the Lyre Bird, Tyawan, as he continues his quest for his lost magic bone.

So there is definitely magic in these mountains, and as if planned, we found a magic gate that took us to an enchanted part of the jungle where we got a little lost, found some Ents, heard Dragons and saw a bigfoot on the street 😉

the blue mountains at night

and day

steep cliffs

the three sisters

the minne haha falls

mini but HAHA

the magic gate

so pretty…

me inside the ent

it this a bigfoot on the street?

Roses visa is up soon, so she will do a visa run to Fiji and hopefully be back soon.

So long
Ole
p.s. i haven’t seen a single soccer world championship game. But i am happy we won the title 😉

Winter in Sydney

My dear readers,

Last time I wrote was when I flew to Sydney to see Rose again. Now I have spent more than a month here. Being a plumber, a carpenter, a model and again demolition man.

Sydney has a lot to offer. It was vivid Sydney, where they illuminated several big buildings like the opera house with projections and had open museums and galleries through the center. But traffic here is like the design of a madman.

There seem to be quite a few nude beaches around. We accidentally stumbled across one when we went to see the beautiful camp cove. It was the shortest day of the year, but it was so warm that i dared into the water.

After midwinter it got really cold however. Snuggle weather. Like really!

Ludo came back from cairns and we spent his last days in australia together. We really experienced quite some adventures together! It was weird bringing him to the airport. Has it really been 5month again? In 3 weeks i will have been gone for 2 years. It feels like i am ready to come back. I am going to stay in sydney until beginning of august and then try to find a boat to asia where i am going to visit some old friends and finish my journey with reflection in a quiet place.

Thats the plan. But if you have been following this blog, you know that plans are made to change 😉

So long

Ole.

P.s. pictures follow if i have a laptop again 🙂

 

Resume

my last post was more than a month ago.
Wow, and i promised my family to write at least one per month…tsktsk OleOleOle…
I really do not enjoy writing blog on my phone though, so please forgive me 🙂

I wanted to hitchhike from the farm to Cairns, to find a job there.
But on my last day we went to the river nearby and i fell in love.
I decided to stay there for 3 days on my own in stead. It was delightful, the occasional pickup or quad driving by (it was the weekend) was little disturbance to the serenity.
It was good to be on my own again, after almost a year constantly together with other people this was the first time i was really on my own again, just for 3 days but still.
First the ship and then Ludo.
After 3 days we had a big goodbye dinner with everybody from the farm, and me and ludo left for Cairns.
Ludo also had a little disagreement with the owner of the farm about how to treat workers so we kind of had to leave 🙂

We stopped on the way to meet 2 German friends of ours and swam in a jellyfish proof ocean net. It felt like going into a swimming pool (20m by 20m), the whole benefit of the ocean was suddenly gone…well at least there was no poisonous stingers.

Next stop Cairns, camping is not allowed in the whole of Queensland (the state we are now in) so to sleep we always drove way out of town to find a hiding spot.
We did not make the mistake to park in a driveway anymore.
Our first night was abruptly ended when the farmer honked and asked us what we were doing, me still half asleep told him some story that we were lost on our way to look for a banana farm which settled him. I even asked him for a job 😉
So we found another great sleeping spot past the airport (-16.871436, 145.731880 google maps)
Once again we were hunting for jobs, and most of you already know what followed, we became Ricksha drivers, or how they call them here Pedicabs.
Also i took my first nickname ever “Red”.
It was pretty amazing, i dressed up as the pirate “Red Ryder”, and played my favorite music all night. I had a party, listed to music, worked my body and got money for that. Great!
I mean the disadvantages were that i started work at 6pm and stopped at 6am so i kind of became a vampire, i did not know what the weather during the day was because i slept at least till 4pm. Also i did not see anything in Cairns, that you could not see during the night. I enjoyed it anyhow.
But people in Cairns now know me only as Red, which was a pretty trippy feeling.
Even Ludo started calling me Red, i did not call him Blue.
I made a relatively good amount of money, enough to afford a flight to Sydney to see Rose again.
That’s where i am right now.
I let ludo travel alone for a while. I really enjoyed the time with somebody from home, but it was weird too. Both of us kind of associated the other with the person from our memories, but it seems people change over time.
I wonder how people are going to see me when i come home, should i keep the nickname?
I think i am going to stay with Olé.
I love you guys, thank you for all the comments.

our zombie parrot

ludo

and me as limepickers

solar eclipse

Ze chocolate bar

i mean the galaxy

my river retreat

i built a solar clock to keep track of time

the river

saying goodye to the goodtimes

australia being hostile

vinegar vs jellyfish

oh i forgot to mention the crocodiles

illegal camping

 

So now i am in Sydney again and am planning to make my way back north again, with Rose this time.
And i will try to write more regularly.
So Long
Your Ole

a backpackers life

hey all my readers, how are you?
and who are you?
It would be amazing if everybody who reads this, if i know you or not, leaves a comment saying “i do”.

Anyhow, back to topic, a lot has happened.
We left sydney.
It was a hard decision, should i stay in Sydney with my girlfriend Rose or travel north together with my best friend Ludo.
I decided to go work on a mandarin farm up north.
We took our time and stopped along the way.
We left on the birthday of my little sister, which i forgot.
And i am soo sorry for that.
We stopped and bought a air matrace and a body board for the big waves.
We took some hitchhikers slept in Coffs harbour.
A little town where we met up with a friend from the horseback riding trip.
He made ludo drink the supposedly worst beer in australia.
According to Ludo VB was “shit but not the worst i ever drank, that was some Spanish beer”
Then we continued, we went to a surfing spot called Skennars head, it lays very exposed and has gigantic waves. Also dolfins close to the coast 🙂
Then we went to a fracking protest with people chaining themselves to roadblocks, where i met my good old pirate friend Lev again.
It is scary what rights the mining companies have here in australia, a farmer has no right to the things under ground only above ground. so a mining company can come and drill on his property and there is nothing he can do against it.
We stayed in the camp for 2 days helping out and for the first time in australia we saw alive aboriginal culture…original australian culture…
They told some of their stories, and one of the elders held a touching speech that they are taking responsibility for what is happening with the land. We white people have no idea what is going on around us, he said, it it their responsibility (aboriginal people carry “the law” of the land/the earth) to bring balance.
The next day he left to a big meeting of 500 native australian tribe elders in the middle desert.
We went on to the mandarin farm, what shock was it that the farmer told us we couldn’t start working for another 2 weeks.
Luckily there was a farm job just 12h car ride away… and we were desperate for a job.
SO here we are.
In the middle of nowhere, charters towers is the name of the town, but we live 20km away on a farm. Picking Limes and pruning grape vines.
We already saw a zombie parrot, a baby python, tons of spiders with incredibly strong nets, kangaroos in the morning sun and hunted kangaroos by our farm dog smokey…he never catches any
The money is not very good, but the people are very nice.
I don’t really know what to do next, but our friend from Melbourne knows somebody who is in labour hire/construction in Queensland. I might try to ask him for help.
Also our car registration ends today, but it is a public holyday…no good.
Anyhow my dear readers, i will take care.

If you want to see pictures and videos, please click >HERE<! Ludo writes in german, but he has a computer. Yes my computer is falling apart.
And please write a comment.

so long Ole

Demolition man in Sydney

Who remembers the 80ies movie Demolition Man with sylvester stallone?
Well i am demolition man, and i get 22.50 Per hour.
Ludo and moi arrived in sydney and finally found a job.
We had a weekend some hours south from sydney in a little surfer town called Mollymook. Where we visited friends of friends.
Huge waves! Seriously 3m high. We did our best to wrestle them down and body surf.  We even snatched a surfboard of a couple of girls to try the real deal.
It ended up to be waay harder than expected.
But after several loads of saltwater, i could stay on it in the vertical position. I have not the slightest idea how people stand up doing it.
But i will try again.
We also went prawn hunting, but we didn’t catch anything.
But it was fun to walk through ankle deep water, with underwater flashlights on sticks in a moonless night.
Ludo wrote a nice article with pictures.
I am pretty exhausted from work, and i cannot stop thinking about whats going on in Europe.
But i am well, with a cheap car and good company.
I will write again, maybe on the weekend.
So long Ole

the Men from Snowy River

Hey there,
as i promised, here comes a picturesce post from the red continent.
We are in sydney by now, and i will slowly catch up with writing.
So enjoy.

a black snake, i almost stepped on it, but ludo saved my life

ludo and his new girlfriend

bird man strikes again

i got them all lined up just waiting for me 🙂

such amaze, much trees, many wow

a piece of real rainforest!

the concrete river

This is how i want my tattoo to look like 🙂

Mist after the rain

the view from Mt Donna Bueng

can somebody tell me hbow a car gets tracks like that?

me and kate, the friend of boinga who we built a fence for

the aequaduct

i am relaxing in the treehouse

The headquater of Boingaology

After Warburton we took the bus to Mansfield where Ron (one of the horseback riding guys) took us in his BMW and with his freshly amputated leg 3 hours in rollercoaster style to the horse hut.
The hut is right near to where the movie “The Man from Snowy River” was filmed, and the customers rode to see some of the movie sets.

Our first impression

strange lichen on every dead tree

we are cowboys…or how they are called here: Jackaroos

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing, give it a lick it tastes just like raisins”

strange insects

unicorns

showing their horn

relaxing in the hut

eucalyptus trees everywhere…with resin

we drove on washed out mountain tracks for hours, to carry the luggage of the customers

and we had good fun

the bushfires destroyed soo many trees, but they didn’t burn, they are just dead.

like ghost forests

safari feeling

our tents

after 2 weeks in the outback we went to canberra and stayed in a nice place…

We hitchiked to sydney from canberra.
Had a unfortunate WWOOFing experience and bought a car for 1/4th of the reasonable price.
but that is a story for the next post 🙂

So Long Ole

p.s.
If you are interested in a tour go >HERE<

p.p.s.
The song for today is: Look at my horse

one big country

Australia is so big!
I was very lazy the last month to read what happened to me please read here… >CLICK<
As it is in German, i probably should at least write a little bit of what happened.
One friend of Boinga (the tree house owner) got us to build a fence for her. our first real working experience. She was an amazing cook and a super nice person. We ended up earning 200 unexpected dollar.
That paid for our trip to another voluntary job in the “Victorian Alps”.
We went and helped out at a horseback riding tour for 2 weeks.
It was a cultural experience, on our first day i thought i can ride and then i had to be a cowboy and bring the cattle over into another meadow and my illusions were shattered…well a little the next day it went waay easier and i noticed that my boss was merely testing my riding skills. What a cheeky bugger.
I played cricket for the first time and found out that it is a lot of fun, but even if i get harassed now it seems like a coward-game 😀
You basically never take risks…but it was fun anyhow.
So after 2 weeks of driving jeeps in 4×4 through washed out mountain tracks we are now in Sydney.
We tried some WWOOFing but we fled pretty quickly as the atmosphere was not really nice.
We just bought a car and got loads of free stuff (incl. a gas stove, a guitar and 2 camping chairs) for just 500$ it still has one month of registration. We will probably use it and then sell it for 2000$ or just continue using it.
This seems just fair as we got ripped off in Melbourne.

so long
Ole
p.s. i am really lazy in writing blog as you can tell but once i edited my pix i am going to give you a picture “caramblogage”

i don’t despise a paradise

oh no i dont!

Ludi and I are enjoying ourselves!
If it is parties in 30 degree nights or acting as movie directors to see the top floor of a skyscraper 🙂
We still don’t have a job, but we are much closer to the farms now.
After an unsatisfying attempt to buy a car,  in which we got double ripped off (by the owner and mechanic) and lost quite some money and gained literally nothing (well maybe some knowledge in how not to buy a car o.O )
That whole car sale thing threw us a little out of it, but now we are back in business!
We are in the tree house paradise of Boinga Bob.
After a beautiful Valentines day, we arrived at Bobs house.
Bob is a world traveler much like me, just 52 years older than myself ( He is 74 😉 )
He has spent his life in Africa, Asia, Alaska and out of the box. He has sailed to england and still knows a surprising amount of German… enough to confuse us and make us laugh 🙂
Here we will help him to bring his house back to life.
The council wants to tear one of his projects down, even though it is one of the valleys main tourist attractions.
Help save Boingas Treehouse! (click!)

We also want to establish a volunteering possibility here, so people can come and help.

Ludis valentin date

lets travel down under

welcome to Boinga bobs Treehouse

i feel like in narnia

the council wants to tear this down! 😦

So this is where we are going to spend the next week(s) and help a fellow out.

Then we will most likely continue to find work on a nursery or maybe winery in the area.

SO LONG
Ole
p.s. check out Ludis blog –> HERE

Kangaroos, Koalas and good news

I am in AUSTRALIA!
I made it to the smallest continent.
Yesterday i got Ludi (Kopfspasmen) from the airport, we haven’t seen for more than 1.5 years.
Damn it doesn’t feel that long at all.
We will just go on as if nothing has happened…everything has changed, and everything stayed the same.

I arrived on my birthday, which was 26h long..yay my longest birthday yet.
2 beautiful ladies picked me up and we went to the Mornington peninsular.
The beach is great, the waves big and so much fun.
They totally bashed the glass out of my sun glasses 😀
After the beach we went to the hot springs which i can only recommend..great outlook over the hillsides and great ambiance.
Forgive me, i sound like a traveling catalogue 😀
We went to see kangaroos and in the koala park on Phillips island the next day…we got 1m close to koalas, which was a pretty cool experience.
Fun fact: Koalas have poisonous meat, because they eat eucalyptus leaves all day.
We considered going to the penguin parade, but 22$ was a lot for just watching penguins.
Especially when you can watch them for free on the St. Kilda Pier…yes i forgot my camera..

Now i finally found an apartment, for the next 2 weeks, really cool.
I wrote application letters to half of Melbourne (and we are going to apply to the other half on Monday),.
We have work on a cactus farm which is on a former surface gold mine, maybe we will find some nuggets (wish us luck!)
And we have an invitation of Boinga Bob in Warburton, which is really amazing.

Now we just have to find a cheap car and a well paid job and everything is perfecter 😉

but for now enjoy pictures:

My sandals died in the salt water

thank you Dad for these amazing sandals, may they rest in peace

oh my god its kangaroo jack

and his whole family

the two lovely girls who got me from the airport

land the f**** bass!!

Koala Time!!

“i am not lazy, i am just saving energy”

Our room for the next 2 weeks

This is Ludi… together will we rock this continent

so long Ole