Encyclopedia Galactica

This Blog contains personal thoughts, pictures and stuff I like. My own posts are indicated with the #PiEquals3. Posts concerning my australia trip are labeled #DownUnder. Ξ Hi! I'm Marc (in Tumblr & YouTube aka PiEquals3), a 23-year-old physicist from Austria. I love playing the guitar and any nerd stuff I find (especially if it's about Star Wars ;) ). Also check out my YouTube channnel.

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the 12 apostles (don't count them. "12 apostles" just sounds better than "some apostles" or "sow and pigletts" as they were called before tourism was a thing ;) ) nevertheless one of the most beautiful places i've ever seen.

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Vader still doesn't know if he should read 'Rogue One: Catalyst' before or after seeing the movie. ps.: i've read far too many books this month 🙀

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The second day at the gorge was even better than the first. The wall paintings you see here haven't even been the highlight of today. I've been to a part of the canyon called amphitheatre. It's like a 100m high cave without a roof, accessible through a crack in one of its walls where a person can perfectly fit through. It was a little breath taking in there, since I didn't expect to find something like that. It was quite hard to take pictures of though. So if you wanna see it, you might have to google or visit it yourself. 😁🙃

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Today was great. I went to the Carnarvon Gorge National Park and did some hiking. While entering the park I saw a group of Emus, at the parking slot a Kukaburra waited for me and directly next to the resting place three kangaroos lay in the grass enjoying their time in the gorge as well.^^ I also organized myself a campingspot here (got the last slot 😁). So I'm going to spend the night here and explore the gorge a little more tomorrow. There are a lot of cave paintings a little bit further inside the valley so I'm going to go there. 🌄🎨🚶

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So today is the 50th day in OZ and I've seen some great stuff already: the Great Barrier Reef with all its creatures, crocodile infested rivers, thousands of flying foxes as well as parrots flying over us to or from their roost, lots of wallabies and also some rarer animals like turtles, a moraine and countless things more... 😁 However, there's still plenty to see and today I spent the day preparing for one of the more iconic tourist attractions - the Uluru (aka Ayers Rock). It's still more than 2000km away, but nevertheless leaving the coast behind here in Australia (or probably just NT and QLD, can't really say anything about the other territories yet 😅) almost equals leaving civilization behind. True, I won't leave the highway so there's always a city (town might be a better term) somewhere, but leaving Brisbane towards west is an almost instant transition from skyscrapers to cattle farming. To be clear, I did drive 150km today, which means the transition is not really instant but compared to the total distance I'm going to drive and to what's lying in front of me (mostly nothing actually 😁) it felt quite quick. Bringing this to a conclusion, I really enjoyed my first 50 days here in Australia, saw great things and did great stuff, and I hope and truely believe that the next 50 days will be equally enjoyable. 😎🍾

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Today the two girls I was travelling with left towards the Blue Mountains to do some climbing. I'll instead head north and then to the outback again to visit Alice Springs and the Uluru. I don't know my exact route jet, but I'll figure it out the next few days. Feels quite strange to have the van for oneself. 😐

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So today we're in Brisbane which is huge. 😳 Especially compared to what we've seen so far, this is the first city really deserving it's name. We had some great breakfest with relatives of mine who are making hollidays here and already did some organizing stuff, like looking for a surfboard to buy etc. In the afternoon we're going to take the ferry through Brisbane. We're going to be around here for the next few days. There's heaps to do. 😎🏄

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Today we've been to Agnes Waters and to 1770 (the place where Captain Cook first set foot on Australia). We did some surfing there (with very tiny waves, but it was still quite enjoyable to stand on a board again ^~^) and also met up with daniel. A friendly mechanic who helped us gettig our car fit again. Tomorrow we're going to head off to Brisbane.

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So yesterday ended with quite some bummer. I forgot turning off the lights of our car and drained its battery. :/ Some guy tried to help us but he placed the wires wrong and broke a fuse. Thankfully the battery's still alive and we could find someone else to help us out propperly. He pulled us to the next mechanic (just about 200m away) and loaded our battery but couldn't help us with the fuse. Also the mechanic already closed the shop and it seemed like we were stranded. However another car stopped by and luckily had all the equipment we needed to get on the road again. Today we spent most of the day working on our car optimising what we can to prevent further complications. Also we drove a little south towards Agnes Water. Can't wait to finally catch some waves tomorrow.

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After a quite rainy start into the week we had close to perfect weather when going off shore to the Great Kapell Island. While snorkelling on the island we saw two turtles and again some strange other creatures i have no clue in how to even describe them. Today we spent our day shopping (but mostly for tools to pimp our van a bit.) and tomorrow we're going to Agnes Water and have some surfing before getting to the big waves further in the south. Oh and i also shaved today which is special because i haven't shaved since leaving Austria. It was kind of hard to trim the beard (with a scissor 😅) but after a few minutes and scratches i'm finally looking civilized again. 😏😎

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First of all. Sry for not writing the last few days. After two amazing days of diving in the Great Barrier Reef (together with clownfish, sharks, cutlefish and turtles :D), I was kind of distracted by some burocratic stuff revolving around my car. Also one of the girls I'm travelling with left our group and went back home (startig her work again). After that I just didn't feel like writing into this diary and focused more on exploring the tablelands of Cairns with all its waterfalls. Now we just finished another short trip into the outback and arrived in Rockhampton. We've seen our first kangaroo (at least the first one which was alive) and we've done quite some miles of dirtroad by now. In the next few days we're going to head further towards south, doing some snorkelling until we're finally able to start surfing. Also it got quite cold by now... Or we just adapted to the higher temperatures now. 😅 I hope I'll be more motivated to update this blog from now on. At least the internet access should be easier while travelling along the coastline. 🏄 (The picture is taken from my cabin on the ship I had the diving tour from. I never new how blue the sea could be until now. 🙉)

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sometimes you lose... sometimes the others win... today i lost a good friend of mine. my guitalele broke. i hope one of cairn's guitar makers can fix that but i think buying a new one might be cheaper. 😕 however... on the bright side i had a great day starting off with a walk through the daintree forest with seeing loads of insects and spiders as well as some birds and a 1m long lizard. in the afternoon we left the forest again and met some aboriginals at a bbq place... it was kind of an interessting evening. most certainly rememberable. 😅

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arriving at the daintree forest we've found an amazingly beautiful beach and created some awesome sandcastles/-animals. also we've found some coconuts and cracked them open like cavemen would. (just with what we've found on the beach.) after all this effort i pulled myself together and tried some... and it tasted well!!! 🙉 what are the guys making coconut flavour thinking a coconut tastes like. it's amazingly different from what the real thing tastes. i never thought the day to come but i do like coconut now. australia's changing you man. 🙈

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this day started off with a beautiful sunrise over our crocodile river. it was cloudy but the resulting red/orange rays on the sea's surface looked absolutely corny. while heading further north to the daintree national park we also watched some hang-gliders starting at a cliff by jumping over the edge. quite spectacular.

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one of the things i miss about being in austria is having good potable water. the water here is interspersed with chlorine most of the time. meaning that you can drink it, but you'll be seeing it again if you don't mix it up with some cordial/syrup. today i bought a water filter to get rid of this taste and with a selfmade funnel i now enjoy chlorine free water. fully prepared we're heading towards daintree forest. ouh and we had lunch next to a crocodile infested river. no big deal. just a 4 to 5 meter long saltie on the opposite riverbank (if you zoom in you can more or less resolve it underneath the tree in the middle of the picture). the statistical 5 crocodiles we could not see (if you see a croc, statistics say that there a 5 underneath the surface) kind of drove us away from the water's edge. it was also quite scarry when the 4-5m saltie suddenly disappeared. but since i'm posting this i'm still alive guys. australia didn't kill me jet. ;) (just kidding mum... it's all save here 😅)

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so we went to cairns today. it's a great city and our timing was close to perfect. we arrived at the beginning of a weekend market/festival where all the clubs of and around cairns joined a parade and had booths. it was a very diverse festival. however, in my opinion it was outshined by the tonns of ukulele, guitalele and guitar players who filled the whole market place with music and by the booths of the guitar makers who sold their work. such a pitty that i've already got so many guitars. 😅 (also the instruments i would have been interested in were far too expensive. 😕) talking about expensive stuff, i also booked a 2-days-1-night diving tour for next week. it's gonna be amazing. (sharks more or less guaranteed 😼)