For starters: a little more feedback would be appreciated. And some more followers. I feel that if a religion would start that way, Christianity for instance would still have no more than 2000 members. So sign up and follow me (just click on the "follow" button in the top right-hand corner, the instructions are pretty straightforward...). On another matter: one of my readers should stop complaining about short/late blog entries on my facebook. That's no way to behave. And you know that I mean you.
OK, so much for complaining on my part, now the usual special welcome to my congregation: Hi, Emily, Josara, Julia, Cord (if that's you) and #5 (who won't get any more special welcomes until I know who you are!).
Now for something completely different, a saga of U-turns, spiders, bush, cats which behave like dogs, dogs which behave like cats, bush fires, the sea, strange signs, gas bottles and Cuban cigars.
Light were our hearts and high our spirits when we awoke on a sunny Thursday morning to start our journey. While Josara and I packed the stuff you will probably need on a camping trip and tried to remember everything (band aids for example, as a kind of protection, as if you don't have any band aids you'll cut yourself - Murphy's law) I did a little video of Willem playing fetch (see entry from the 9th). He can do it for hours on end which is much longer than any dog did I ever had. In the end we thought we had covered it all:
Then the cats had to be taken care of as they had to stay home and the house had to be secured; after all that was done we faced the art of loading a pile of stuff and two dogs and two humans in one car:
- a task which was finally completed.
In order to be able to use such sophisticated devices as cookers and gas lights we needed a new gas bottle, as the one we had was a little on the empty side, so we decided to swap it for a new one at the nearest gas station. Please note that this gas station diversified and also offers dry-cleaning, key cutting, bait, groceries and all kinds of other services...
But also, to my not-small surprise, the following:
Cuban cigars and ice cold coffee (real), sounds like an awesome combination, but anyway, we exchanged an empty gas bottle for a full one of the same making. A task which should not be too hard for an experienced gas station/cuban cigar shop owner but we will return to this topic later. I mused why the guy had taken up all the other businesses besides running a gas station when I discovered that it's probably because so many people just fill up their cars with petrol and drive away without paying. In order to put a stop on this behavior there were signs like this all over the place to educate people to check beforehand that they can pay, under the punishment of Embarrassment or Police Investigation. You can't really see it on the pic but the last line informed the reader that "Stealing Petrol is a Crime". I like that a lot, maybe they had to put it there because so many petrol thieves got away with an excuse like, "Well, I didn't know that stealing petrol is a crime, I mean, nobody told me.."?
After that, and an ironical comment on my tendency to take photos of everything (that I had become a tourist) we were off to our destination, which was not the Grampians (we had to improvise as we couldn't find a kennel for the dogs and the Grampians are a "no dogs allowed" zone). Instead we went here.
Some random pics made on the way:
Even though I'm a skilled navigation officer, the journey involved several U-turns as I got confused by missing street names and the occasional left-right weakness I developed due to driving on the other side of the street.
I didn't know that the Australians in that part of Victoria were such big fans of the TV show LOST but apparently they are, especially fond of the actor who plays the part of Sawyer..
So fond, in fact, that they named a street after that guy, maybe presented it to him as a gift or perhaps it's just an image campaign to attract LOST fans...
Who knows? Anyway, we arrived at our destination and at this stage of the tale I feel I should explain how it came that we went to this particular cabin in the bush.
A couple of friends of Josara bought 10 acres of bushland some time ago and planned to build their house in the middle of the bush. The guy started together with some mates to build a shed, first using second-hand materials he got from his job as a landscaper. After the shed more or less finished the plan of building a house there got somehow abandoned and now every once in a while they come out there for a weekend. When we arrived the first impression of the vegetation which populated the track up to the cabin led to the conclusion that for some time (my guess at least a year, maybe longer) nobody has been there and the bush reclaimed the traces of civilisation. 
Unfortunately the bush also consists of creepy crawleys who reclaimed the interior of the hut. A decent layer of dust covered any surface and cobwebs covered the rest. But as we couldn't find a sufficiently flat surface which didn't contain vegetation we gave up the plan of setting up a tent and decided to give the cabin a try. 
Industrious sweeping with a broom led to the discovery of several dead, decent-size spiders, which made me suspicious about the living ones. Back home I am not worried to share my sleeping room with spiders as we don't have any eight-legged monsters whose bite will make your arm swell to double its size and glow in the dark. So I went on a spider search, paying special attention to the mattress and yes, of course I found two specimens which I relocated into the wild by means of a piece of cardboard and a glass. I have no idea if they were harmless or poisonous as I'm no arachnologist but in Australia you shouldn't give these creatures the benefit of a doubt.
Once the room was "cleaned" and the local wildlife evacuated we started to move our stuff and things and provisions into the hut and I tried to set up the gas stove. Just to discover that the gas station might sell great Cuban cigars but can't replace a gas bottle, as this bloody idiot of a gas station guy had changed the empty gas bottle, which had a 2 inch joint to connect any device, with a full one which had a 4 inch joint. Awesome. Now we had a great gas stove and a great gas light which were utterly useless. Which led to the question of how to improvise dinner and how to get a little light for after dusk. We then discovered that nobody thought about getting candles but luckily Josara had brought an awesome torch including a spare battery. And we had also enought stuff to eat which didn't need cooking.
The nightfall brought my last full moon in Australia, which provided enough light outside so that you didn't need a torch if you went out to take a leak. The evening entertainment was quite frustrating for me as Josara bought a Scabble game and for the first time since I was 14 I tried to piece words together from letters. I found out that when it comes to play Scrabble my brain is (even after two-and-a-half years here) still in German mode. I could have made great German words but in English I didn't stand a chance. And Josara made up words! At least she lay words on the board I never heard or read before. Outrageous! She won three times in a row. Ok, to be fair, we wrote every disputed word down and looked them all up once we were back in Melbourne and I had to admit (grudgingly) that they were all proper English words.
Another hard blow for my manhood, first several mistakes on the job as "man-with-the-map", unable to set up a gas stove (not my fault but still...) and then beaten in a board game by a woman (three times in a row!). I blame the pink toothbrush...
Ok folks, that's day one, I will continue tomorrow with the next day. Take care and cya tomorrow
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