state of the stay

One week to go here in Melbourne and my efforts are directed into two directions:
- find a travel companion/sketch a travel plan until I have to leave Aus;
- see what's to see in Melbourne;

People we met have been supplying great opportunities and search/travel resources.
Unfortunately a hop-on/hop-off bus from Cairns to Sydney is EXPENSIVE, 500$AUD. But there are alternatives. One of them being the return of rental cars through StandByCars. I'll call them to book one of them if still available.

I'd like to just catch up with a travel companion and hitch-hike our way up or down the east coast between Cairns and Sydney. Camping would be cool and cheap but heavy on my back. That is why I am packaging and sending some heavy stuff (books and alike) I brought back to Germany. I prefer to spend some AUDs and spare my back. When we flew from Perth to Melbourne, my backpack weighed almost 18kg...

Other opportunities that really caught my eye are ship crew search portals. The concept is simple. A skipper needs a crew for a cruise/race/etc... and posts in a forum for that request and the details. Crew members have a section to post their availability and expertise. www.crewseekers.net, www.crewplaces.com, www.findacrew.net and www.crewsearcher.net are just some of them.

Interesting that some crew searches state "female" between 24 and 28. Mermaids do look better than pirates, very true! I don't think I will be sailing this time, but the concept is nice. I liked the Mexico -> Australia opportunity I saw on CrewSeekers.

We haven't done much in Melbourne yet. We went up the Eureka building, chilled on the hot beaches at the Bay and St.Kilda, had a meeting with a bunch of other CSers in a cool pub, found a second and a third host for our stay, had some great vegetarian food, met some really nice people (again and again... CS rocks! (PSSSEC too!!))

I am still struggling about the BDO. The only suitable dates would be for the venue in Gold Coast, Queensland (54mi from Brisbane), on 20th of Jan but it's sold out. Then comes Melbourne on the 28th where only the ONLINE tickets are sold out (there is still hope) but some more travels and the so desired delay in the flight back would be involved.

Acknoledgement: The free internet access used to write this post and the two latter ones is provided by the State Library of Victoria (in Melbourne). Thank you State Library! No picture uploads are possible though, at least these computers are pretty well tightened down:D...

over and out

n.-