Categoria / Category Australia

In Australia, Highlight, Traveled places, Oceania On  10/03/2013  No comments

See posts on trip through Australia 2012

• Street art em Melbourne
• Daintree Forest (tours)
• Yarra River, Melbourne
• Great Ocean Road
• Great Barrier Reef dive info
• Great Barrier Reef diving
• Signs: forbidden and allowed
• Cape Tribulation
• Cairns and surroundings
• Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park
• Aboriginal Learning with Alison Hunt
• Manly beach yesterday
• Great graffiti art in Melbourne
• Train from Melbourne to Sydney
• Melbourne by night
• Wineries in Victoria
• Sky
• My colorful carnival
• Public bicycles
• My first helicopter flight… over Uluru

Visualizar Viagens Errante / Errante’s Travels em um mapa maior

In Australia, Oceania On  24/11/2012  No comments

I was impressed by the amount and quality of the graffiti in Melbourne, specially around Fitzroy. The neighborhood is an ecletic mistures of cafes, shops and vintage places, and here the street art goes with this variety with colors, shapes and shadows. It is like an organic garden of collors invading the squares architecture of the neighborhood. With this diversity of street art, Melbourne is considered the  “Stencil Graffiti Capital,” not only Fitzroy but all over the city one can find different types of stencil and graffiti. I saw that there was some tours to see the work of these street artists, a tip could be the “Melbourne Street Art Tours”. I didn’t take the tour. In general I don’t like guided tours, and I imagine that the way I would enjoy these artwork would be different in a tour. I prefer to go without a group, on my pace, and if interest me, if I need no know more, I can came back to the place (or museum) and then, on the second visit, I take the tour...

In Australia, Oceania On  11/11/2012  No comments

A short video of the tours in Daintree Forest

Daintree Forest, Queensland from Karla Brunet on Vimeo.

See more on Daintree at:

• Cape Tribulation
• Tui – Daintree River guide (Queensland, Australia)
• Relaxing morning by the pool and computer
• Daintree Rainforest

In Australia, Oceania On  11/11/2012  No comments

I always liked cities with a river, in my imaginary I have some of the famous European cities and their rivers: Paris, Berlin or London. The Yarra river is a landmark of Melbourne city. By its shores passes cyclists, tourists, runners, and you can see all kinds of boats, specialty the big rowing boats. The landscape is also seductive, large modern buildings, small houses, trains, trees, parks, bridges… Well, maybe that is why Melbourne is considered the most European city in Australia.

Yarra River, Melbourne – Errante from Karla Brunet on Vimeo.

See more about Australia here.

In Australia, Oceania On  17/04/2012  No comments

The Great Ocean Road, also called Surfcoast Highway, is one of the main attractions of Australia. My idea was to rent a car and drive on it. But, unfortunately, I forgot my drive license at home. So, I decide to get a tour. The pro side is that you don’t have to worry about driving, about maps, about which side of the road to go… The down side is that you have quick stops in each place, it is the fast tour: get out of the bus, take a photo, hop on the bus again…

The road was constructed between 1919 and 1932, when soldiers came back from Turkey from the World War I (The memorial to the soldieries reminded me my visit to Gallipoli in Turkey).  Our fist stop was Bells Beach, an Australian icon for surfing. Getting there, our tour guide played the audio of Point Break, a movie by Kathryn Bigelow with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves, Bells beach is the location of the huge surf wave...

In Australia, Diving & Snorkeling, Oceania On  16/04/2012  One comment

Here I put some info on the dives. After some months trying to download the information of my Mares dive computer on a Mac or Linux OS. I happily found Dive Board, an online scuba logbook where I could download my data. Here is the link to my dives in Australia

Day 1

1st Dive – Petaj Mooring http://www.diveboard.com/karla.brunet/12198
Date: 2012-02-09 – 11:05 Max Depth: 16m Duration:47mins

2nd  Dive – Petaj Mooring http://www.diveboard.com/karla.brunet/11737
Date: 2012-02-09 – 14:34 Max Depth: 10.1m Duration:48mins

3rd dive : Whale Bommie http://www.diveboard.com/karla.brunet/11738
Date: 2012-02-09 – 16:44 Max Depth: 11m Duration:47mins

4th dive : Whale Bommie http://www.diveboard.com/karla.brunet/11739
Date: 2012-02-09 – 19:41 Max Depth: 11.5m Duration:31mins

Mergulho na Grande Barreira de Corais from EcoArte on Vimeo.

Day 2

5th dive : Whale Bommie http://www.diveboard.com/karla.brunet/11740
Date: 2012-02-10 – 07:33 Max Depth: 18.6m Duration:53mins

6th dive: Tennis Court http:/...

In Australia, Diving & Snorkeling, Oceania On  16/04/2012  One comment

In order to dive on the Great Barrier Reef I decided to get a 3 day / 2 nights live aboard. Early in the morning we meet at the dive shop (ProDive) and went for a breakfast on the boat before departure. The trip to the Great Barrier Reef was smooth, no storms and no seasickness. It was interesting to notice that during the whole trip nobody got seasick. We were very lucky with the weather. Even so it was rain season, we had sun light every day. There was some rain, but not in the way to damage our dive days.

Our first stop was at Petaj Mooring, a dive site at Milln Reef. The crew of the boat was excellent in doing the dive brief. They showed us a map of the site, explained what we could see and the best way to explore the place. For the ones that did not remember how to use a compass, the give a quick refresh. The importance of using the compass was because we were in our own, there was no divemaster guiding the dive...

In + More..., Australia, Australian Curiosities On  15/04/2012  No comments

It is incredible the amount of signs of prohibitions in Australia. In the great majority of the beaches, before one get in, there is a sort of “menu” of signs of things one can and cannot do. The feeling of controlling is so strong…

In Australia, Oceania On  10/04/2012  No comments

Another great day trip out of Cairn is Cape Tribulation. Actually, I don’t recommend it as a day tour, the best way is to stay a night over there to enjoy the forest, all agencies give you that option of staying over and getting back with the next day tour.

Our guide, Peter, was very funny; with him I learnt “no worries, let’s keep going”. During the trip he explained us about the sugar industry, as this part of Queensland is a big producer of sugar cane. He mentioned me all the time during the tour since (for him) I was one of the “competitors” in the sugar market.

We stopped a few times for lookout and had some walks on the forest. Here again, it is very neat. The path is very well constructed, wooden made, beautiful and they scare you to not wander around, you are not allowed to walk outside the path, otherwise dangerous things will get you. One is a plant that will make you itch for 6 months.

It is a beautiful rain forest, some of the trees are similar with the ones in...

In Australia, Adventure, Diving & Snorkeling, Oceania On  10/04/2012 

One of my reasons to come to Australia was to dive in the Great Barrier Reef, so I got an airplane to Cairns on northern Queensland coast. The city, at this time of the year, reminded me Brazil (Salvador). It is hot and humid, and I loved. It was the rain season, so there is a bit of rain almost every day and, at the same time, there is bright sunlight everyday too, like tropical Brazil.

Cairns seemed a calm tourist town but with a lot of activities: diving, rafting, ballooning, national parks, islands, crocodile watch, skytravel… There were so many options it was hard to choose one. First I wanted to get a sense of the place, see the town, so I waked a lot around the port, the marina, the esplanade. Then, I rented a bicycle (actually, I borrowed from Stephen’s friend on Gilligan’s) and went on a bike trip around town. It was a bit rainy but good to get a broader view of the city.

After that, I spent some time relaxing on the city Esplanade Lagoon...