A continent single-handedly
Since yesterday afternoon I'm sitting on the train and crossing a continent. Hour after hour I see nothing but red earth, bright blue sky and colorless tufts of grass. The 1500-kilometer drive through Australia's flat, dust-dry center takes 20 hours. From Adelaide on the south coast to Alice Springs. In the middle of the wilderness.
The shiny silver train with the red locomotive is called "The Ghan" and is a myth of feudal sleeping cars and nostalgic salons. I travel more pedestrian in the recliner of the "Red Kangaroo Service". The luxury takes place anyway outside the window and means width. Apart from kangaroos bobbing along the horizon, the sheer distance is the real sensation. I'm traveling long enough to internalize them.
The tour through Australia - vacation or self-experiment?
"You're afraid of something," a friend tells me two weeks earlier in Berlin on the way. I'm only determined to do something for my emotional well-being. "If I wanted to do something good," she replies, "I would never fly alone to Australia for two months." That I see things differently is also relatively new to me. There is simply nobody there who would like to come along. Family vacation was yesterday. I'm completely dependent on myself again. And I want to make up for something: traveling. Right away. And maybe a little longer.
My daughters have just moved out; When I was as old as she was, it was no further from East Berlin than to the Black Sea. Later, I was always tied to work and family. I had almost forgotten the dream of the long journey. I have just turned 50 It is time.
Australia - is this a holiday or a self-experiment? Am I maybe too old for that? Or maybe too comfortable?
In my backpacker hostel in Alice Springs I quickly realize: I do not have to do everything alone, because of course all other tourists want to go to Ayers Rock. The hostel arranges tours for every taste. Most of the organizers fulfill my wishes in the package, including trips to Kings Canyon and the Olgas, a group of sandstone cliffs.
Shortly determined, I pack a bag, deposit the suitcase in the luggage compartment and start into the heart of the "Red Center". For the next three and a half days I'm on a small bus and always have someone with me who knows the best ways: Dave is our driver, guide and cook.
I'll help with the dishes and spend the night in a "swag", a spacious open-air sleeping bag with an integrated mattress. My travel companions on a temporary basis - French, English, Swiss, German and Israelis - are on average only half my age. But our age difference soon becomes relative because we are doing the same things. When I tell them that I have two grown-up children at home, they are surprised.
The tour is not famed for fun and action, not even for opulent champagne buffets at Ayers Rock, but for plenty of time on your own. Dave scares us out of the swags early enough so that we can tackle the tightrope walk at Kings Canyon before mass storm and noon. The next day we roam a windy gorge in the red rocks of the Olgas or Kata Tjuta, as they have been called since the land was returned to its ancestral owners.
"Many heads" means the Aboriginal name, and that's what they look like: spherical, 300 meter high sandstone formations. On the way, I get to know a nearby thorny devil, a small dragon with a spiny tank. And I try inconspicuous, watery desert plants, with which already the natives quenched their thirst.
The Ayers Rock - a monolith of perfect beauty
And then Ayers Rock, which the Aborigines call Uluru. All the world is traveling to the monolith in a flat, deserted environment, teetering on tiny flies, getting up at five in the morning and planting a forest of tripods with digital cameras just to see the sun turn on the light. It also tears me from my stool, brought with me, as the brown rock turns slowly in the most beautiful tones, rusty red first, then orange and golden. It was worth it, just for this one moment, that I had hoped so much.
Later, nice clouds cast filigree shadows on the glowing rocks, and we walk around it leisurely on foot in less than three hours. Deep cracks and cracks run through its surface: they are traces of the beings from the "Dreamtime", the creation story of the Australian Aborigines.
The Aborigines recommend simply listening: the land, the wind, the rustling and chirping, the legends. I follow her advice, am happy in a calm and at the same time shattering way.
As a monumental anchor point, the only one in the flat wilderness, the rock Uluru centers all the energy of the surroundings. Everything here runs towards him, seems to exist only for him. No wonder he is sacred to the Aborigines.
What is the best way to get from A to B?
I had planned a round of half of Australia - to the metropolises in the southeast, the Red Center, the tropical north and the shores of Queensland. At home, I was almost desperate for travel planning. On the spot, the next goal concretely in mind, everything seems suddenly simple and manageable.
My family wants to know where I am. The daughters mother me by e-mail. I am not out of the world, but the distance to the domestic everyday life adjusts itself by the way: What do I want to see, where to sleep, and how do I best get from A to B? Such problems are affecting me now. It feels good to focus on the present, to manage life from one day to the next. And it feels good to be perceived by my traveling companions and dorm-comrades without any expectations just as I am currently - depending on the form of day energy bundle or lazy sleepyhead.
And all the time there are travel tips first-hand. I'm still listening in Sydney. 900 kilometers later, in Melbourne, I can already have a say. There I am alone on the Queen Victoria Market. I take my time, after all, it is one of the largest open air markets in the southern hemisphere. Already the halls of the 19th century are worth the visit, and in view of the expenses I regret that I can not cook on my own: silvery bream between red crabs and mountains of shining black shells. From the next stand the smell of coriander and lemongrass flows towards me, a little further stacked mangos, papayas and the oval, green cockatoo plums.
European and Asian immigrants have blended Australia with cosmopolitan and culinary delights - the good German bratwurst is one of the naturalized exotics. Only: eating alone, I still find depressing. How well that sushi is also on hand here.
The world seems to be taking root in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city. Sky-high glass palaces like those in the US, Victorian facades, Asian faces, Italian cafes and global bustle rush past me. Melbourne has about 200,000 inhabitants more than Berlin - dimensions that are difficult to grasp.
My companion is called "Lonely Planet" - a travel guide that I usually see mostly among young people. When I start to feel lost, I let him lead me to the city's most beautiful historic arcades and Art Deco façades. Often he lets me stop where I passed by. For example, at the "Sofitel Melbourne", where in the café on the 35th floor an overwhelming panoramic view over the skyscrapers in the evening sun is waiting for me. "Enjoy yourself," the waitress says friendly and puts a silver tray with coffee in front of me. That's not so easy - in some moments I would like to have someone here who shares my travel adventures with me or at least a piece of cheesecake.
Time passes quickly, but not fleetingly. I feel like I've been in Australia for half an eternity. For the two months put into perspective: The young people with the Working Holiday visa, who are here a year on the road, consider me almost as a short-term traveler.
Nice random acquaintances in the hostel
"Are you also in the civil service?" Asks the teacher from Dortmund, who has taken six months off. He's a chance acquaintance: When the hostel bedroom filled up on the evening of my arrival in Melbourne, I realized in bewilderment that I was in a mixed room. If you want a ladies' dormitory, it must say it at the time of booking.
I have breakfast in the communal kitchen with two women from the Ruhr area, both in their mid-40s, for eight months with their motorcycles on tour around the world. One has a job waiting for her, the other is waiting to start again. Being mobile with minimal luggage - the feeling I'm testing right now has perfected them. They enthusiastically tell me about the opera visit in Sydney and about the gorgeous dresses for twelve dollars, the piece they had previously bought quickly in a thrift store.
Sometimes I already know my roommates from the bus. For soloists, this means of transport is more relaxed, cheaper and more sociable than driving: During the day you can see much more, at night you can curl up comfortably in the recliner chair. In contrast to the airports, the bus stations are also always centrally located. And the budget hostels send their vans to pick them up.
Not even Australia is big enough not to meet friends unexpectedly. At the petrol station on the Stuart Highway, Kate and Sam from Scotland waving the Great Ocean Road on the Greyhound bus weeks before. Britt and Jan from Wiesbaden, companions of the Ayers-Rock-Tour, cruise back in Darwin and eat with me. Britt is studying for an exchange semester in Brisbane.We arrange to visit them when I stop at the East Coast.
I enjoy my own openness. Never before have I talked so much to strangers when traveling. The feeling of having set out for a long-cherished dream, a time-out for world experience and self-exploration. Rarely does it become too colorful for me. In a hostel with triple rooms, I'm going to sleep. Door open, door closed, light on, light off, unabashed chatter, then even the friend thunders at the door. Do I have to do something like that? The next day I flee to a hotel to recover. But two days later that's too boring for me. The only conversations are with the Mamsell, who serves breakfast. Shortly decided to book the next trip again low budget. This time around Cape Tribulation: North of Cairns, in the humid tropics, lies the interface between the Earth's oldest rainforests and the foothills of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast - two species-rich ecosystems in the immediate vicinity. Unfortunately, it is still raining, and I am trudging on the mangrove-lined sandy beach through swirls of drizzle and fog.
Many encounters, many impressions - and much of it perfect
Then there are days that are just perfect. Three of them are in Kakadu National Park, 200 kilometers east of Darwin. As a precaution, I have logged back into a team, after all, there are crocodiles there. This time around we are eight in the jeep, and exceptionally all over 30. Our destination is one of the few areas that count twice as a world heritage, because of their natural and cultural treasures: The Kakadu National Park, half the size of Switzerland united the scenic extremes of the tropical north - savannas, rainforests, wetlands - and those sandstone cliffs that have been home to the Aboriginal people for fabulous 40,000 years.
"How many kilometers do you trust today?" Our guide Ranid asks solicitously before we set out on our next hike. Then he steers us into a particularly remote corner, the way goes quite steeply uphill. The ledge below which we finally unpack our lunches has once been a sort of living room. Since time immemorial, he has offered the Aborigines refuge from the sun, wind and rain. On the rock walls, they have immortalized their paintings: birds, turtles, human figures and mysterious symbols. The spectacular rock galleries are among the oldest works of art in the world. How many years these pictures adorn the Nourlangie rocks can only be appreciated. However, a few thousand are certain.
So that the eyes can wander, keep the feet with you. The narrow summit plateau rewards with a 360-degree panorama. A few kilometers later, a shady rock pool awaits, filled by a crystal clear waterfall. Bathing several times a day refreshes and replaces the shower. In the evening we set up our tents in the bush camp, Ranid squats by the fire, sizzling chicken pan, and then we sleep happily under a sky full of stars.
The next day, before returning to Darwin, it is once again adventurous: Spread on three motor boats, we drive up the Mary River, until we lazy right and left on the shore here or here and see their heads unmoved stretch out of the water : not just a few crocodiles - the largest crocodile population in the world.
More and more often coincidence gives me perfect moments. But I also manage to bring it about deliberately. And to preserve, also completely alone for me. A realization that I spent a long time on. The distance from everyday life can not be packed and taken home. A good deal of serenity.
I like to be in the wild, also rather tough on foot, but by no means someone who instigates survival training without necessity. In normal life, work often ties me to my desk, and I have to overcome myself on a regular basis. But here in Australia, I barely recognize myself. Never in my heart would I have come up with the idea of parachuting over a Brandenburg meadow. And now below me is the South Pacific, Australia's Sunshine Coast, a beach near Noosa. It was not necessary experience, it said in the prospectus.
Parachute back to the Australian earth in 45 seconds
Free fall and float - in tandem with a professional I dare the attempt. If only I did not suddenly feel so queasy, now, at 3.6 kilometers! I'm strapped in front of Juraj, and in a double pack we crawl to the exit. Before the last step over the edge, I would like to change my mind. But my tandem partner just jumps without further discussion, and I have to go with it. , ,
The dive lasts 45 seconds, 200 km / h thunder in my ears, suddenly a jolt and silence. We hang on the wing, fly, sail, look. Then a soft beach landing. Less than an hour later, I have an expensive but priceless video in my hand. Without it I would not believe it myself.
