monday, december 18th

weather was still "horrible" (= cloudy). went to another beach called "ocean beach". (what a weird name!) and watched some people surf. ...apparently, they didn’t mind the conditions (= "rubbish":), zoom in blackboard on picture!) the highlight of the day was the next stop: an animal farm where we got to feed and pat koalas, kangaroos, alpacas, guinea pigs, rabbits, horses, donkeys, goats, and camel kinga!!! there were also heaps of other animals like emus ("em" and "mu"), dingos, chickens, bisons, ...so much fun!

back on the road we couldn’t miss out on a cheese factory and two wineries and get some more bottles of wine. in one of the wineries the owner went absolute nuts after i had told him where i was from. he didn’t know kulmbach, neither bayreuth (of course:) ) so i mentioned wuerzburg thinking he might have heard of it since it is a german wine region. then he started to tell us all about a fairytale-wedding he once attended in wuerzburg, how it was the best wedding he’s ever been to, how he had to kidnap the bride, how he didn’t keep in touch with the groom, wolfgang, but met him 20 years later. he liked his own story so much we didn’t want to interrupt him, kept tasting wines and let him daydream.

before it was time to say goodbye we had a little picnic at the river in denmark and headed towards albany. stopped at a beach called cosy corner which (due to the weather) wasn’t cosy at all, but never mind.
albany was wa’s first town (established in 1826). its population is something around 30000, I think, so quite big compared to everything else in the west. (there are 2 million people in wa, only 500 000 live outside of perth.) went for a little walk in town (which sort of reminded me of fremantle) and then to "the gap" and "natural bridge", quite spectacular rock formations at the coast. i felt like a little child, climbed basically on every single rock :) and enjoyed the gorgeous view. once again i was astonished by the powerful and a bit frightening way waves were breaking.
on the way back we (pretty much spontaneously) decided to step by michael's parents’. wanted to say hi, maybe chat for 5 min, have a look at their house (in the living room the wall facing the ocean is made out of glass. and since they live on a hill it makes you feel like flying above the ocean. wow!) and leave, but they wouldn’t let us go without having dinner. and so we ended up eating yummy fish michael’s dad had caught himself the day before and chatting for 2 hours. very nice people. oh yes, and they also had one of these talking parrots in their backyard. how cool is that?!
our backpackers was nice as well; a lot bigger than the ones so far with heaps of people walking around and always somebody to talk to. there was some kind of a "backpacking-feeling" in the air, which made me want to go travelling on the east coast!!! (...or at least stay in sydney for a week.)