My granddad’s birthday

It was my granddad’s birthday yesterday. He turned 76. Two weeks ago I was walking around the Freo markets and trying to find a nice gift for his birthday. This was really difficult! What should I give my granddad? He has everything!
But then I found something which he definitely didn’t had yet, something very unique and special to Australia – a cane toad! :-)
The cane toad was introduced to Queensland in 1935 in order to control the native cane beetle that destroyed the cane crop. But instead of eating lots and lots of cane beetles the cane toad started spread across country. It spread all the way from Queenstown to the northern boarder of Western Australia where they are trying to fight them at the moment. [A very funny movie about different ways to kill a cane toad.]
One way to make use of these toads, and more important to make this problem public all around the world, is to dry frost them, stuff them and sell them as souvenirs :-)
I think he liked this special present… at least I hope so :-)

Going crazy for BANANAS

When we have been to Queenstown (NZ) we ate at least 4 bananas each day. They were soooo cheap!!! And we met other Aussies in the supermarket who also bought a whole bunch of bananas after seeing the price tag. We just smiled at each other :-)

The price for one kilogram of bananas here in Australia at the moment is about A$10-14 (6-8Euro) whereas in NZ they only cost NZ$2 (1Euro) per kilogram. The cyclone Larry that hit the cost of Queensland in March this year destroyed most of the banana crops. This article expects the price for one kilogram will double from A$3 to A$6… It hasn’t doubled it is now four times higher!

3000km

I bought my scooter in May this year and since then I am driving to Uni nearly everyday; which is about 40km in return. Today my speedometer reached 3000km! I didn’t realise that I drove that much already…
But it is still good fun riding it! I enjoy driving along the river, admiring the huge villas and beautiful gardens along the way. And since I have waterproof trousers I don’t mind riding in the rain anymore.

Melbourne
On Wednesday we took the bus back to Melbourne and stayed for 2 nights in St Kilda (a suburb in the south of Melbourne).

We tried to get a taxi from the bus stop to the hotel – 4 people, 4 bags + 1 large snowboard bag. One taxi driver (normal car, NO station wagon) stopped and wanted to put the 4 large bags in the boot, he said he wouldn’t mind if the boot wouldn’t close. The snowboard bag should sit on our laps in the back of the car… but it was longer than the width of the car. But he said even better! So the bag can rest on the open windows ;-) We didn’t take this taxi!

The next day we went to see “The Leonardo da Vinci Machines – An Exhibition of Genius” . They tried to rebuild the machines da Vinci draw sketches of. It was really interesting to play with these machines.

Snowboarding in Mt Hotham

The next Friday we flew back to Melbourne and drove up to Mt Hotham (4h north-east of Melbourne).
[Actually I drove up with a couple of friends but without Ian. After we booked all our flights Ian noticed that he forgot about a wedding of a very good friend. So he flew straight back to Perth for one day and returned to Melbourne just after the wedding finished. Crazy guy!]

It snowed when we arrived at Mt Hotham late at night and we were happy! But it just snowed 3cm and they had spring conditions as well – icy in the morning and slushy in the afternoon. Only 1 blue (middle) run and 2 green (easy) runs were opened. And because the snow depth wasn’t that great there were little rocks and grass patches all over the place.

I couldn’t resist and I bought myself a fancy red lady’s snowboard in Queenstown (NZ). So I am boarding down the green run avoiding all bloody beginners who might graze my new snowboard. Then I saw this black rock sticking out of the snow in front of me. I couldn’t avoid it anymore so I decided to fall rather than scratch my board…. bad decision… I fell on one arm only and tore my left shoulder muscles. It really hurt and I had to pause for a couple of minutes. I decided to finish this run and see a doctor as the pain didn’t go away.
And, well, there was this other much bigger rock in front of me… I couldn't avoid it and this time I didn’t try to fall - my should still hurt…. now I have this massive big scratch right in the middle of my new snowboard…. I was fed up and frustrated!

I didn’t snowboard after that because of several reasons – my shoulder (it takes 1-2 weeks until the muscles are healed completely), my snowboard (didn’t wanna risk more major scratches on those crappy runs) and because it was quite expensive. They reduced the lift passes by $8 but it still cost $79 per day (50€) with only 3 runs open… I reckon this is much too much!

Anyway we had a great time! It was really quite a relaxing holiday. We played cards and solved Sudokus and went for walks in the spring weather (up to 13°C on top of the mountain!)

How to prepare a Kiwi...

Chop off feet and head first – Shave – Slice – Eat ;-)

"Bras only!" on the bra fence. On the way up to Cardrona between Queenstown and Wanaka.

Snowboarding in Queenstown

We arrived in Queenstown (New Zealand) on Saturday afternoon. The approach via plane was just magnificent! We crossed the mountain range that runs through the whole southern island and finally landed in this beautiful valley. It really looks like Hobbit land :-)

The view from our apartment (left upper pic) was also quite good. But as you can see there is something missing…. SNOW!! It was lovely spring weather with up to 16°C so we wondered what it would be like on the slopes…

The next day we drove up to “The Remarkables”. I mean the view from the top of the mountain was just great but we were a little bit shocked how less snow there was. The car park was just muddy. A couple of days before we arrived the temperatures rose and the snow melted so the slopes were icy in the morning and slushy at midday. But it was alright much better than expected. And I improved my snowboarding abilities; I can do both turns now and started to link turns.

The second day we snowboarded in the rain! Something we both never done before ;-) We hoped that the dark clouds would bring snow but it was to warm – just above zero.

The bird you can see on this picture is a parrot called kea. It loves cars or maybe it is just bored. But it stripes the plastic or rubber of the cars. Pretty funny to watch if it is not your car :-)

On the third day it rained so much that we decided to do some sightseeing. We drove up to Wanaka and went to the airplane museum “War Birds” and to the “Puzzling World”.

They had a tilted house and walking inside this tilted house was really funny. Water and billiard balls are running or rolling uphill and one can stand straight on stairs and it looks tilted.

Another attraction is the room of the following faces. These faces are actually impressions in the walls but it looks like as if they are protruding and they follow you all the time.

And there was also this labyrinth were you had to visit all 4 corner towers before finding the exit. We did this in just 15min instead of the approximated 1h by just walking left all the time. This method works really well!

The other night we went to this restaurant hidden in the back streets of Queenstown called “The Cow”. It is a great (mainly) pizza restaurant!! [Read this for a description] This night there were a couple of blokes playing this “cow game”. One started by putting on a very nice cow suit with a really fancy plastic udder. Now he had to walk around the restaurant trying to persuade others to wear this cow suit for a while. It was a good laugh and his “moo” sounded quite real :-) Eventually he found another guy.

On the last day we drove up to “Cardrona”

where we had the best snowboarding of this holiday! There was a little bit more snow then at the Remarkables and much more runs were open. And we could watch the Coca Cola Cardrona Games where snowboarders and skiers compete.

City to Surf Results

The results are now online. From the 9.534 people that started the 12km run 9.596 finished (yeah, don't ask me, I also don't know why more people finished then started...)
Me and Ian finished the 12km in 1h21min40sec and came therefore on place 7738 and 7740 … at least I wasn’t last! There were after all 1856 people behind me :-)

NZ we are coming!!!

I am excited! We are flying to Queenstown (New Zealand) tonight and we will be on our snowboards early Sunday morning! The snow report for Coronet and the Remarkable looks just great! I just hope it will stay cold the next days!
And after one week of snowboarding in NZ we will stop over in Melbourne for another week of snowboarding at Mt Hotham.
I am curious to see how the skiing areas in NZ and Melbourne are compared to the Alps in Europe. I mean I don’t expect them to be the same… I will let you know!