Fraser Island Clip

Here we go - 4.5 minutes of fun at Fraser Island:

Große Trauer

so now the inevitable happend. I lost something. Bad thing: It was my camera. Good things: It wasn't much worth a thing anyway. There was sand all over the thing and - even better - I swaped the SD Cards just minutes before I left it on the car-roof at Lake McKenzie. It's probably smashed into thousend pieces by now >> just think about all the Defender, Patrol, Hilux, Pajero and Land Cruiser digging through the so called road.

So stay tuned for some awesome pictures of Fraser Island :o)

Road music (2)

Today we travelled in the past ... OMG, do you still remember???
I didn't know you could see Angelina Jolie in the video clip. That happens if you grow up without MTV obviously ;-)

Quick note: Our pictures

I just realized that probably not everyone reading our blog (is there anybodyyyyyyyyy out there????? ;-P ) is on facebook (why not?). The links we usually include into our blog texts are part of a facebook photo-album. This means you can only view all pictures in the album if you log into facebook. Without an account you can only check out the pics which we have directly linked in the text. That sucks.

To get the full picture story and to be able to browse through the pictures, please use the links on the right side of the blog, where it says "links" (even though its on right ... haha). Or just sign up to facebook ...

• China
• Australia
• Australia 2
• HDR & Panorama
• Natural Tan-project
  

The very first time ...

To do something for the very first time is always special. Remember: Riding a bike, flying, going to a club, being alone at home ... you know all these sorts of things ;-)

Growing up, there are a few good friends around that are currently on the way to experience quite significant "first times" - the first appartement together, the first baby (multiple), being married ... we hope you all do well and the adventure is just as exciting as you thought it would be. Therefore, we dedicate this blog entry to all people who currently do something for the first time in their life. How does it feel???

During our past 7 weeks of travel there have been so many "first times" already it is hard to keep track of them. But a few days ago there was for sure a highlight: Surfing Australian waves. What an awesome sport but I know now why surfers usually look like they do (in case you don't know: *yummie!*) - that sport is f*** exhausting!!! Pardon my french. There are no pictures - we were to busy fighting against current and waves - but this is what the beach kind of looked like. And - thanks to our horse riding (she) and snowboarding (he) experience - we were able to actually surf and stay on the board for over 20 sec. So proud!!!

Visiting the Australian Zoo also had a very important first time: seeing a wombat. After actually hearing them already around our tent at night, we now could see them and found out that these little teddy-bears can run as fast as 40km/h. Try to run away from that one - right, why would you ... Btw, did you know that a 200t whale can go as fast as 48km/h? You don't want to be in the boat that's crossing his way while sprinting. The "rusty motorcycle" noise we heard at night and thought it was a bird, is actually ... a Koala. A few more animal facts: Kookatoos can live for as long as 80 - 100 years, alligators even up to 130.

Speaking of animal facts: While hiking around Ebor Falls on the Waterfall way, we had another "first time" encounter. All kangaroos we met so far were quite cute animals, very relaxed. But there are others, this one being about 1,90 - 2,00m tall with a chest and arms I don't want to fight with. Up for a little boxing, anyone? The Red Kangaroo can even grow up to 2,40m according to a display in the Australia Zoo.

Our when-we-got-it-it-was-brand-new car (= 16kms) shows 5,000kms now. For those who want to keep track I try and continue my list I started recently:

1. Narooma was beautiful, don't miss the beaches!
2. We decided to finally buy a tent and spend a day on the beach @ Batemans Bay (beautiful!) and tested the tent on the weirdest campground ever. Close to a highway, no facilities - and still, some people drive over 100km to stay just here for 4 nights. Not to mention all those people that started to shovel in the middle of the night. Weird and soooo scary!
3. After another day on the road we arrived in the Blue Mountains and stayed at an ok-caravan park in Bleackheath. Management is very grumpy and literally everything is forbidden. Nice facilities, though.
4. The next day was "4WD day" with a lot of gravel roads in the National Parks north of Katoomba. Don't miss the Glowworm tunnel. Also the Dry Canyon is worth a visit - there is a nice Geocache hidden at the end of the canyon.
5. The next 2 nights we spend at the Flying Fox in Katoomba. A fun and relaxed hostel with very helpful staff - the facilities are a little bit too much hostel for me though ... especially the bathroom.
6. Our activities in the Blue Mountains see here.
7. We left the Blue Mountains heading north through the hinterland. Passing Scone (horse town) and the Burning Mountain. We stayed in Armidale at the Pembroke Tourist & Leisure Park - so far so good.
8. Enough north - we turn east, following the Waterfall Way to the coast. Passing Wollomombi and Ebor Falls.
9. At Grafton we stay a wonderful but rainy night at the 5* Caravan Park "The Gateway Village". It was Jacaranda Festival in town.
10. Due to the weather - rain, rain, rain, and again, rain - we did not go up to Byron Bay the next day, but stayed in Lennox Head. And extended to a 3 nights stay. The YHA in Lennox Head is a wonderful place to be - don't miss Graeme's self-made chocolate cake. Beautiful walks, great beaches, good ice-cream.
11. Finally we had to go north and went via Australia Zoo (and - also a first time: a really awful caravan park in the Glass House Mountains) to Rainbow Beach to check out the Fraser Island packages they have to offer. Not so much for indiviual travel, rather groups. Very backpacker!
12. We decided to postpone Fraser Island by 2 days and went back to Noosa. Our tent site is on the beach. Pure holiday. A must on every travel plan.

So far, so good. Only 1,300kms to go - about 10 days left. We will get there. Stay with us ;-)

If one is not enough

Everybody who travels knowns this dilemma: Should I take a big SLR with me or just the small digicam? I always go for the digicam solution which is a Powershot A590 IS. Sounds fancy but it's only about 100 EUR on amazon. Why? There are several reasons but the most important reason is that I already broke two of those cameras and it would be a shame to say that I broke my Canon 1D Mark IV just because I left it standing in the rain.

So I deal with my good old Powershot and make the best out of it. And there are three things which are helping me with this task:

• First of all the Canon Hack Development Kit or CHDK. This is a small software you can load onto your SD card which tweaks your Powershot a little bit. Longer exposures, RAW-Pictures, higher apertures, bracketing and a lot of more stuff. You will find two 50s exposures in the picasa-album >> check the stars on the brighter picture.
  
  
• Another great help is Igor. This is my Oregon 300 GPSr which is quite handy if you try to geotag your pictures. Just record where you are going, sync the clock with your camera and later on you assign geolocations to the taken pictures by software - GPicSync. No more "Hmmm ... where have I taken this one?"
  (If you ask yourself why I call it Igor there is a good read at hand: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. The little T.S. calls his GPSr "Igor")
  
  
• Now it get's tricky. There are these amazing views which just don't want to be taken on a single picture. Either you are praying for a fish-eye lens to materialise in front of you or - even worse - the lighting is so dynamic that your camera can't deal with it.
  The solutions to these two are quite simple if you think a little bit ahead. Take some more pictures and later on software does the trick.
  Panorama stitching is quite common but don't go for the Canon Stitch which comes along with your PowerShot. You should use Hugin instead which gives you way better results as you can see on the "Melbourne Central" picture (It's made out of 30 pictures) and it's for free!
  The second software is called Qtpfsgui and composes a high dynamic range picture out of a series of exposure bracketing (also freeware). For this one you do need a tripod to take the pictures otherwise it doesn't work. Make sure you have nothing moving in your picture like clouds otherwise you will get a lot of noise in it. The "Remarkable Rocks" HDR was one of those. The software has a noise reduction filter but you just loose contrast along with it.
  

So this is it. This is how I do the magic just with an ordinary digicam which is already the third in my possession (The first got stolen, the second died after 11.000 pics and this one did indeed survive a night in the open rain).

... and now I gotta go outside: Bright Beaches, Waves, Sunshine, 30°C, Ice-Cream, Palm-Trees and A Wonderful Girl :o)

HDR and Panorama

Road music

We carry about 20 GB music data with us, 2 iPods and an iTunes Library and our brand-new Suzuki Vitara, called "Victoria" luckily features an AUX-IN.

So this is the song of the day today:

Already drove 500kms today, hoping to arrive in Armindale, NSW, by 9pm. That was a long day on the road through horse country and Hunter Valley.

And by the way: Seems like we have x-mas sorted out. We will meet a bunch of Couchsurfers in Auckland and have a cooking-brunch with local traditional dishes. So much looking forward to it!