January Summary

Some time has passed since my last post. A lot has happened too. But first of all, my best wishes for 2013. May all your dreams come true! And let's hope the beginning of 2013 will be much more interesting than the end of 2012 … :)

So last couple of weeks I spend some time on the road here, about 4000 km: a 3-day road trip to Canberra visiting the War Memorial, a daytrip to Lake Eildon and again a 3-day trip to Adelaide. Half the fun about travelling in Australia are the free camp sites in the National Parks. The camp sites provide not much luxury, if you're lucky you've got running water and a flush toilet, but mostly it's nothing more than a fireplace and a pit toilet. The national parks are mostly closed on Total Fire Ban days, which doesn't mean you're not allowed to make fire. Of course it depends in which state you're travelling. It seems that Victoria and New South Wales are much better equipped than any other state. And it's the only way to save money on accommodation. I didn't find camp sites as we know them in Europe yet. On the paid camp sites you just need to pinch your tent next to the camper vans, and pay about 30 to 40 AUD. But, if you found a decent camp site in a National Park. It's unbelievable! I just spend my morning looking for night sky maps on the net. They might help me to identify all those constellations. At the moment I only recognize the Southern Cross, Orion and Jupiter :) Next time I'll try to take a picture of the sky at night. Canberra is a capital like Vientiane, absolutely nothing to do. Luckily they have some nice museums over there. And they are the one and only reason to go there. The War Memorial is pretty nice. All kind of memorial statues are flanking the main road towards the building, depecting a major battle in Australian history. The Memorial itself covers the military history of Australia, although the Aboriginal times are not really displayed in depth. The main focus lies on both World Wars and Vietnam. Yep, many of you might not know, but Australia was one of the strongest US allies during the Vietnam conflict. As a Belgian, the section about WWI is very interesting. The battle of Passendaele is covered quite detailed and the Menin Gate Lions are welcoming all visitors entering the Memorial. But the main focus lies on the Galipolli debacle, were the ANZAC troups where defeated by the Turkish. The WWII area was more about the Asian-Pacific conflict (my first 1:1 Zero), but there were some nice Afrika Korps items too. The day trip to Lake Eildon was a good reason to escape the hostel. I was just tired of sitting inside looking for a job. Job hunting is a lot harder here than I ever could imagine. The Working Holiday visa seems not to be the best visa to find a decent job (it allows me the work for 6 months with one employer). And a lot contract/temp jobs in IT go over those 6 months. So yes up until now no difference. Although I saw some really nice IT roles, I mostly receive a negative answer telling me that "Whilst your background and experience is significant, unfortunately on this occasion we have received applications that more closely match the skill set required for this role." I really get pissed about this one. Seems they just don't want to employ me for some weird reason. However, I'm enlisted with 4 agencies now and one private company enquiring for more details and possible sponsorship. One agency seems to have a nice role pending, although the job will require relocation to Sydney. A wild shot for an open role with Bekaert Australia turned out to be nothing. They really need a full time IT support guy, not a possible candidate not even sure to stay in Australia for a while. May be there might be an opportunity in a couple of weeks when they start planning the roll out of Windows 7 en Office 2010 in the financial sector here. Anyway, Lake Eildon was a nice day trip, very similar to the area around Mt. Buller. At least it looked very a-like :) And last week we left for a trip to a Adelaide. One of the guests here wanted to relocate, I needed a drive in the country and someone else needed to drop some stuff off. We decided to jump in the car and drive off. A 750 km drive north-west if you do it directly. Off course we didn't. We took a detour to stop in the Grampians on the way to Adelaide. A very nice National Park with an Aboriginal Cultural Centre located inside the park. This detour caused us to drive all the way up north of Adelaide to find a reachable, free camping spot near the ocean. Next day we visited Adelaide. It's a pretty small city compared to Melbourne. But it's also much cheaper and in general a bit warmer too. The drive back was also not as planned. We thought it to be possible to find a camp site near Keith, but we ended up sleeping at a truck stop, right on the border South Australia – Victoria.

Next day we drove to Mount Gambier to visit some crater lakes and the famous Blue Lake. And boy, I do know why they call it the Blue Lake. I've saw some really pretty lakes around the world, but none of them was as blue as this one. We all wondered why it was so bright blue. 5 m² of tourist information about the craters and the geological environment but not one reason explaining why only that one lake turns so blue in summer. Yep, in winter time it is as green-grey as all the other lakes in the area during the whole year. We followed the coastline to Warnambool, where we enjoyed the view on the braking waves. From there it was another 2,5h drive to Melbourne.

The weather here is very, very unpredictable. We've got pretty normal days around 25-28 degrees but it also hits the low forties, when the wind's coming from the north. Those days are the dangerous ones. Mostly there is a Total Fire Ban announced and depending on the Fire district you're in, there will be severe measurements. The fires in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales are still big news here. Every day the fire fighters will manage to control some of the fires, but it really is a difficult fight. Even on colder days it is dangerous, because everything is so dry. One spark sets everything on fire. Most fires are caused by lightning, but don't underestimate the number of human caused fires. Some of them are deliberate (insurance fraud), but most of them are just stupidity.

I'll give it another month, but if I didn't find a job half of February I might start moving towards Adelaide and Perth. The route I might follow is absolutely not certain, but I'm dreaming about a tour Adelaide – Alice Springs – Perth. Seems a bit weird, but I really wonder how the outback is. I'm just not sure if it's possible to cross the country in Ford Falcon Wagon, a 4WD might be the only way to do it… I definitely have to take some precautions before trying to cross the country (decent maps, water and gas containers, …). But hell yeah, I'm looking forward to it. [googlemaps height=395 width=600]

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