Martijn's Blog

Allegedly the largest wine producing area in Australia is the Barossa Valley. It is located 75 km north of Adelaide and worth a visit. Famous Aussie wines that come from there are Penfolds, Jacobs Creek and Wolf Blass



I didn't visit those wineries however, because I think it's nicer to taste wines you can't get everywhere in the world.

Instead I went to:
Gibson
Thorn Clarke
Yalumba
Domain Barossa and
Bethany

The wine was mostly excellent and it was possible to taste the more expensive bottles if they had one open. I especially enjoyed the Yalumba winery, becauase they would let you taste with 2 glasses so you could compare 2 wines.

Adelaide is a city of about 1 million people. It doesn't look that big though when you drive through it. There are some really nice buildings:


old and new


Victoria Square


Adelaide Family Law Registry

I also saw a t-shirt we could use for our next squash tournament

Op zondag de familie Jak in Waitpinga bezocht. Lenie is een volle nicht van mijn vader (haar moeder was een zuster van opa Dirk Mulder). Ze wonen al een jaar of 40 in Australië altijd in de buurt van Adelaide. Ze hebben een prachtig groot grondstuk waarop Huug het huis zelf heeft gebouwd.



Lenie had nog ewen fotootje van vroeger met een hele kleine Ben en Chris in de boot.

On Wednesday I caught up with Adam aka The Tangent, The Bremo, Breman etc. He invited me to come along to a piece of land at Lake Corangamite -that his family owns- for a short camping trip.

We met up in Camperdown around 20:00 and we drove another half an hour to the lake. By the time we started the 90 minute walk through the forest twilight had set in. It wasn't very hot anymore which was good because we were carrying our backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, food and water.

Just after it had gotten dark we had to cross a little fresh water stream. I decided to jump it instead of carefully stepping on the soft soil. Not a good choice! I landed knee deep in the mud.


A small bit of the heal of my right foot still had the original colour

Adam was adamant :-) that we were close to the pentagon (a pentagonal shed he and his dad had built years ago) where all the cooking utensils etc. were stored.
After walking another half an hour in the pitch black we saw a fence which should have indicated the location of the shed Adam realised we had walked to the other end of his land and we decided to walk back in the direction we came from. It was 23:30 at this point.
After half an hour we gave up and put the tents up and had a beer.


When we woke up the next morning we found we were only about 300m away from the shed.

the legendary pentagon

Although there was a general fire ban we made a (very small and very safe) fire to cook some food. Very noice!

Adam the cook

It promised to become very hot again; after our 'breakfast' the thermometer indicated 40 °C. It was hard being out in the sun so we found a little shade under a tree where we spent most of the day chasing away the numerous flies before walking back to the cars.


Wild life

I said goodbye to Adam -who was staying another night- and drove to Warrnambool. I never enjoyed a shower like that before.

Hier een MG A die ik op de 'Great Ocean Road' tegenkwam. Het is er een uit 1960 hij is geimporteerd uit de Verenigde Staten en moest flink gerenoveerd worden. Daarna moest ook de stuurinrichting nog omgedraaid worden.

I went to see some action at the Australian Open. The first match I saw was a doubles match between Michaela Krajicek / Agnes Szayay and Cara Black / Rennae Stubbs which Krajicek lost. (no more Dutch players in the tournament left)


Michaela Krajicek

Kiefer - Chela, which Kiefer won easily.

Nicola Kiefer

Patty Schnyder - Anastasia Myskina, Schnyder through to the quarters.

Patty Schnyder


Afterwards: dinner at the Thompsons.

Dinner at the Thompsons

Staying with Marcus, Kate & Henry in Kew, Melbourne. They have a very nice apartment on top of a hill with a swimming pool on the grounds. The pool was nice because the weather was quite different here than in New South Wales: 43°C!


little Henry enjoying the swim


Kate & Henry

Marcus took me along to the Cricket. A new cultural experience for me. Australia beat South Africa by 59 runs.

Telstra Dome

The Paul & Madeline Smith took the airplane car and showed me around Wollongong and Kiama.

We saw the Buddhist Temple, the blowhole in Kiama and drove back through the Jambaroo valley.



The Nan Tien Temple


Kiama blowhole

Afterwards a beautiful meal was prepared by Madeline and Susan.

Made it to the Hogg residence in Wollongong to visit Kate, Eden and Liam. Corey had left a few days earlier so I just missed him.

At night after James and his girlfriend showed me a local pub a feast was wating prepared by Linda.

Went out for dinner in Surry Hills with Brendans mum Anne and his sister Hope to a very nice Chinese restaurant (Billy Kwong)

Eveline, daughter of Björn & Karin born on Friday 13 January. Congratulations!

Went up the sky tower today and the view was amazing. Pictures didn't really come out so just one of the tower itself.

I arrived in Sydney on Tuesday arvo after a 3 hour flight from Christchurch. Ed was there to pick me up from the station.


Ed: man and machine

He was so nice as to invite me to stay in his apartment which is beautifully located at the Sydney harbour just across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Kirribilli, right next to where the prime minister lives.






the view from Ed's living room

Conclusion after 2 months in New Zealand.



I have driven 7000 km through New Zealand and still there are a lot of things I didn't see and do. It's a great country if you like an active holiday or enjoy nature and landscapes. Obviously there isn't as much history as you'd find in European countries, but in my opinion the beautiful scenery and the low density of the population makes up for that.
New Zealand is 8 times larger than Holland and has 4 million inhabitants (of which nearly half live in the 4 largest cities) while Holland has 16 million.



I really likes the Kiwis: they are very friendly, welcoming and helpful. I have met a lot of them and a few have become quite special to me. The other pleasant surprise were the Dutchies I met along the way. Usually I'm far from impressed by other dutch tourists, but this trip all the dutchies I met were really nice.
The Irish don't care too much about personal hygiene. (I have the distinct feeling I already knew that)
The Germans don't speak English terribly well (I guess I was spoiled by the Germans I was working with)
The French will speak french in an international group.

After an uneventful stay in Blenheim it was time to go back towards Christchurch to finally do some sightseeing there and prepare for the flight to Sydney. Christchurch is a beautiful city with some 330'000 inhabitants. Mostly low buildings and very stylish. It has more atmosphere and is a bit more provincial than Auckland.

I sold my car, well it is being sold by an auction house and they said they'd mail me the cheque :-) I guess the cheque's in the mail.

Because the weather was finally good I went to Motueka to spend a day on the beach. Shame the water is really cold, so no swimming for me.

I felt like doing something touristy in Nelson, so I took one of those doubledecker tourist busses around Nelson. It dropped me of at the World of Wearable art museum, which was definitely worth while. It had a showroom full of classic cars (I wasn't allowed to take any pictures) and a large section of Wearable Art.

Many people on the way have told me they loved Nelson, a city of about 50'000 souls in the north of the South Island. I hadn't visited it when I just arrived on the ferry and because the weather forecast for Nelson was good (it mostly is) I drove from the pancake rocks all the way north to Nelson. Indeed a very pretty little city with an excellent climate most of the year.
I found a very cheap hotel room in the centre of town: $30,- Of course I should have been suspicious that it was so cheap in a popular destination like Nelson but I guess I'm still naive.
When I had had a beer in the bar downstairs I decided it was enough for the day and wanted to go to sleep. That was just when the band started playing and they stayed with it until about 2:30 am.

On the first of January I left Wanaka to go and see the Franz Josef glacier. The drive there through the Mount aspiring National Park was amazingly beautiful once again.


What struck me -besides the landscape- was the amount of dead possums on the road. In the 150km I drove I saw 67 road kills!


There seems to be quite a problem with possums in New Zealand: it's a plague with an estimated 60 million possums.

When I arrived in Franz Josef the weather was terrible; grey and wet. The lady at the backpackers informed me that the forecastn for the next few days wasn't going to be much better. I wanted to take a helicopter tour over the glacier because I still can't hike for longer periods of time but in bad weather that's a waste.
So I decided to leave the next morning to see the pancake rocks at Punakaiki. Because it was quite windy the waves made it spectacular.

Happy New Year everybody;

Gelukkig Nieuwjaar,

Gutes Neues,

Prospero Año Nuevo,

Bonne Année,

Head Uut Aastat,

Gott Nytt år,

Bliadhna mhath ùr