At the weekend I went down to the Mornington Peninsular where Dave Martin had organised a BBQ at his beach house in McCrae. A good occasion to take some photos of the beautiful beaches. After a stop at Rye Ocean Beach we went on to London Bridge and Portsea Ocean Beach, before we finally met the others at the barbequeue. On Sunday we visited one of the numerous wineries around Red Hill and after that we went down to the beach again in Mornington where there was a nice sunset and an interesting view of Melbourne | See the pictures …

More than 30 degrees at 10am, the forcast predicts almost 40 degrees in the afternoon: only the beach can save us now! About an hour by car, at the start of the Great Ocean Road near Torquay the sandy coast of Jan Juc Beach awaits us.

Due to bush fires everything was coverd by smoke once again, even along the coast the thick haze lay over the water … in the afternoon the sky cleard though and out came the sun | See the pictures …

I wish you all a merry Christmas and some quiet holdays!
A temperature of 14 degrees and light rain is somehow similar to Christmas in Constance … however I’m definitely missing the hot wine! Greetz all around the globe!

See you soon,
Felix

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The latest pictures from my trip to Sydney are online | See the pictures …

(weiterlesen …)

What do an Emu, a Kangaroo and a Saltwater crocodile have in common? Well, apart from obviously living in Australia? All three of them were on my pizza that I ordered at the dinner with the guys from the workshop. As for the crocodile you have to imagine a mixture of chicken (the color) and fish (the flavour). The cangaroo might be comparable to venison; but my favourite is definitely the emu – very lean and a flavour that isn’t too intense.

The reason why I’m here in Sydney is actually the “International Workshop on Multiphoton Processes in Glass and Glassy Materials”. Over two days researchers presented the projects they’re working on as well as their results – I was one amongst them. In a 20min talk I tried to wrap up our present results – given the huge amount of data a not too easy undertaking (chance would be a fine thing). But it was a successful event in a comfortably casual atmosphere.

After some one hour flight off the Avalon Airport (the smaller of the two airports in Melbourne that doesn’t actually look like a real Airport) I finally arrived here in Sydney. From tomorrow night on I’ll stay at the Rydges Hotel in Camperdown for three nights, for the first night I had to look for a hostel. Ended up staying in the City Central Resort Hostel, nicely central located, a 10 min walk from the Opera House. In fact I just went there to satisfy my touristic needs. (weiterlesen …)

In the most southern corner of Victoria, at the same time Australias most southern tip at all, resides the Wilsons Promontory National Park, renowned for its breathtaking nature. It offers almost everything, bushland, mountains (well, at least some little), forest and sandy beaches.
Many walking tracks are crossing the park, some are more maintained, some others less. A two hour stroll or a multi day hike, you can have it all. We (this time that means Jesper, Jasmine, Dillon and I) chose the latter and tackled the “Northern Circuit”.
This walk consists of four stages (if you skip several camps as we did) and sourrounds the northern part of the Prom. The difficulty is said to be moderate to hard since the track marks are availible only sparely sometimes and hence you’re supposed to be capable of dealing with maps and compass. | See the pictures (weiterlesen …)