I'm in Sydney! I don't know why, but arriving here triggered a big endorphine rush, a "Yeah, I did it"-feeling. Strictly speaking I had already crossed the continent in Byron Bay, when I was at Australias most eastern point, but somehow arriving in Sydney made it feel more real.

Maybe simply because this will be the place from where I'll fly on. I don't know. So far I haven't seen much of Sydney, so I don't really know what to think of the city. I mean, I have heard so much about city ranging from "best place in the world" to "I don't like it". And unfortunately now will not be the time to get a solid opinion of Sydney; tomorrow I'll drive down towards Melbourne where I'll stay for a couple of days before returning to Sydney to sell my trusted car. Then I'll have plenty of time to explore the city. Speaking of selling the car: Today I took a look at the famous Kings Cross car market. And I'm telling you - it's dodgy as fuck! Kings Cross as such is pretty dodgy to start with, but this car market, on the second level of a filthy parkinghouse, is really, really dodgy. I'm not surprised that a few people got robbed there. I probably should take a photo of it, to give you an idea what it's like.

Good bye Byron

My last days ibn Byron Bay have been pretty good, btw. I didn't do all that much, but at least I finally managed to visit one of the many workshops that were offered at the Arts Factory. I went to a fire twirling workshop and got shown how to use these ... thingys. I never can remember the bloody name! It's something french with "p". Well, it's basically two stings that have burning balls at the end. And you move them around your body and it looks really cool. That is, if you know what you are doing, which I certainly don't. Which is also why the ones I trained with didn't have fire on the end, but were nice and soft instead. And that, I can tell you, was a good thing, cause I kept hitting myself with them balls all the time. And I hit myself where it really hurts! Don't wanna do that with fire - no, no.

Leaving Byron turned out to be amazingly difficult. It's one of the places where you can get seriously stuck. It's got a good vibe and I met some really cool people there. A lot of them a bit strange, or maybe I should say "non-conformistic", but very interesting nonetheless. Like the girl who told me that in her family they had five generations living under one roof, because every girl in the family was a teenage mother. Or all those would-be hippies, who were born 30 years too late and now try to live in their own version of the 60s. You find a very motley collection of people at the Arts Factory! Unfortuantely though, I havbe the nagging suspicion that the management of the Arts Factory has moved a long way away from it's roots. I mean, they raised the dorm prices by 10 AUD to 32 AUD/night during Splendour - that doesn't have much to do with "love and peace", I'd say.

From Port Macquarie to Sydney

All in all it took me two days to drive from Byron Bay to Sydney. I made a overnight stop in Port Macquarie where I stayed at "Lindells Backpackers" (22 AUD). The guy who is running the place seems to genuinely care about the place, so it was a nice place. Tonight I'm staying in the "Glebe Village Backpackers" (26 AUD), in Sydneys student area. The place seems to be nice enough, the only thing I really miss is lockers for my stuff. Call me paranoid, but I'd rather be able to lock my stuff up. Oh yeah - and it's freezing, freezing cold! The problem is that these guys here don't have central heating - or in a lot of cases no heating at all. Brrrrrr.

On the web:
Glebe Village Backpackers