Sunday, April 3, 2011

3.4.2011 Wollongong day 3

Wollongong harbour
our favorit drink "cappucino" - you can get a decent one almost anywhere in AUS &NZ

Wollongong harbour

Berrima art center. I almost bought this sculpture & have it shipped to Mollens

Rain Forests you can find all over the eastern/southern coast of Australia

Weather: beautiful day and warm. One of the best days of our entire trip.

Today we just hung about and took a little sidetrip to Berrima. A playground for wealth poeple from Sydney. It almost sports more restaurants than inhabitants (400). Was estabilshed around 1842 and quite a distance at that time. Today easy reachable by car – 140 km. Houses with 20 or 40 acres sell for as much as 1.7 Mio AU$.


Summary / Zusammenfassung Australien

17.2. - 25.2. und 14.3. - 4.3.2011
Stationen unseres Aufenthaltes
    • Sydney und Cairns per Flugzeug- 16.2. to 25.2.2011
  • Autorundreise von Adelaide nach Sydney: gefahrene ~3766 km- 14.3. to 4.4.2011

Ureinwohner: Aboriginals, welche vor 50'000 Jahren aus Südostasien eingewandert sind, 250 Sprachen mit 700 Dialekten
Fläche: 270'534 km2, 33 bis 53° südlicher Breite und 160 bis 173° westliche Länge
Kellereien: ca. 1500 und 28 Anbauzonen
Zeitzonen zu uns: Perth +7 Std., Darwin & Adelaide + 8.5 Std. und Sydney +9 Std.
Einwohner: ca. 21 Millionen

The following information I have picked from the official Australian Tourism site

Australian's Landscape
A wide, brown land
Australia is the sixth largest country in the world. It's about the same size as the 48 mainland states of the USA and 50 per cent larger than Europe, but has the lowest population density in the world - only two people per square kilometre.
Beach paradise
Australia’s coastline stretches almost 50,000 kilometres and is linked by over 10,000 beaches, more than any other country in the world. More than 85 per cent of Australians live within 50 kilometres of the coast, making it an integral part of our laid-back lifestyle. 
Australia island home
Australia is the only nation to govern an entire continent and its outlying islands. The mainland is the largest island and the world’s smallest, flattest continent.
Australia's exports
Opals in your eyes
Australia produces 95 per cent of the world's precious opals and 99 per cent of its black opals. The world’s opal capital is the quirky underground town of Coober Pedy in South Australia. The world’s largest opal, weighing 5.27 kilograms, was found here in 1990.
Gold galore
Kalgoorlie in Western Australia is Australia's largest producer of gold. It also embraces the world's largest political electorate, covering a mammoth 2.2 million square kilometres.
Australia's Record-Breakers
Natural legends Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef is home to the world’s largest oyster, weighing up to 3 kilograms, while the world’s longest earthworm, stretching up to 4 metres, is found in Gippsland in Victoria. The heaviest crab, weighing up to 14 kilograms, is found in Bass Strait near Tasmania. Australia’s tallest mountain is Mt Kosciuszko, which is 2,228 metres above sea level.
Longest road, rail and fence
The world’s longest piece of straight railway track stretches 478 kilometres across South Australia’s vast, treeless Nullarbor Plain. Australia’s longest stretch of straight road - 148 kilometres – is on the Eyre Highway in Western Australia. It’s just a tiny portion of the 2,700 kilometre sealed road that takes travelers from Perth to Adelaide.  The world's longest continuous fence – the dingo fence – was built to keep sheep safe from Australia's native dog and runs for 5,531 kilometres through central Queensland and South Australia.
Merinos and cattle calls
Australia's 85.7 million sheep (mostly merinos) produce most of the world's wool. With 25.4 million head of cattle, Australia is also the world's largest exporter of beef.

Australia's People and Culture
An ethnic melting pot Since 1945 more than six million people from across the world have come to Australia to live. Today, more than 20 per cent of Australians are foreign born and more than 40 per cent are of mixed cultural origin. In our homes we speak 226 languages - after English, the most popular are Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Arabic.
Big country, big ideas 
Australians invented notepads (1902), the surf lifesaving reel (1906), aspirin (1915), the pacemaker (1926), penicillin (1940) the Hills Hoist clothesline (1946), the plastic disposable syringe (1949), the wine cask (1965), the bionic ear (1978), dual-flush toilet flush (1980) anti-counterfeiting technology for banknotes (1992) and long-wearing contact lenses (1999).
Aboriginal advances
Believed to be the world’s oldest civilization, Aboriginal people have lived and thrived on this continent for more than 50,000 years.  Aboriginal societies made many unique advances long before the Europeans arrived. They invented the aerodynamic boomerang and a type of spear thrower called the woomera. They were also the first society to ground edges on stone cutting tools and the first to use stone tools to grind seeds, everyday tools developed only much later by other societies.
The 10 largest trading partners with Australia are
  1. China
  2. Japan
  3. USA
  4. Singapore
  5. UKSorry to say that Switzerland is not on the list.
    If you want to pick up more economicdetails go to

Pour ceux qui aimeraient s'expatrier pour jouer du golf, voici quelques informations concernand
Wollongong Golf Club
Green Fee 1130 AU$ y inclus 100 pour le restaurant (qui n'est pas mal, mais il faut s'adapter: pour commander un repas il faut se mette en ligne avec les autres clients et payer tds. Les boissons sont à commander auprès du bar à côté) et natruellement aussi à payer tds.
Une carte de membre par année est de 600 AU$.
Normalement il n'y en pas de frais d'entrèe dans ce club.

No comments:

Post a Comment