Hi ! I'm Elie, a young traveller. Welcome to my website !

I created this blog a few hours ago, and I hope you understood what I'm going to write on it... Because the topic is in the title : "A trip to Australia" (not the most original title ever, I grant you ). Now, I'm just working on the appearance of the web site, before I leave at 5 A.M. tomorrow, to catch my plane, at 8 A.M.

This was the longest flight I've ever done ! I think I stayed in the plane during twenty hours. Fortunately, there was a stopover so I could stretch my leg, but these were one of the most boring hours of my life.

I'm currently in my room, in a hotel in Sydney. I can't sleep, even if it's 5 A.M., maybe because I slept approximately ten hours during the flight and the jet lag. But it's still dark, so I'll wait for a couple hours before exploring the town. 

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I didn't know there were so many things to visit in Sydney. I guess I won't go everywhere in here, since I want to travel across the whole country. Today and because this is the very first time I'm in Sydney, I tried to begin with the beginning. And by the beginning, I mean Botany Bay, the place where James Cook arrived on Saturday 29 April 1770, when navigating his way up theast coast of Australia on his ship, HMS Endeavour.

I did some research, and I found that Botany Bay had a diverse marine population, and the area around its entrance is a popular place for scuba-diving. And I can understand it : the water is peaceful and unimaginably clear. I tried scuba-diving, but I'm not good at it. I stayed near the pontoon and I didn't see many fish, but I'll take what I can get. At least I could take a picture of the bay.

There were three other things I wanted to see in Sydney : Sydney Opera House, of course, but also the Central Business District and Harbour Bridge. They're all very close from each other so I could end my visit in Sydney today. A friend told me that these places were even more beautiful at night. I decided to wait until it was dark enough and, during the day, I went to Luna Park, a theme park, to pass the time and I did a few attractions, like the "Wild Mouse", the "Rotor" or the "Spider". The only strange part of the park was ironically its entrance, in the shape of a disturbing face...

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Apart from that, Luna Park was a lot of fun, and the best was yet to come : when I arrived at my destination, it was dark and I had an amazing point of view. From where I was, I could see Harbour Bridge, Sydney Opera House and the CBD.

After contemplating the panorama, I ate in a small restaurant and just came back to my hotel. Yep, I didn't have any tickets for an opera or a play, don't be disappointed.

Today, I went to Canberra, the capital city of Australia. It's Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. It's one of the most closest big towns near Sydney but it's still 280 km away from my last destination. I travelled by bus, and it took me hours, but it was worth it : I could see something I see now as a symbol of the Aboriginal presence in the country, of Aboriginal unity on land rights and sovereignty, but which also shows the discrepancy between them and the rest of the inhabitants. What am I talking about ? The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, a semi-permanent assemblage claiming to represent the political rights of Aboriginal Australians. It is made up of a group of activists, signs and tents that reside on the lawn of Old Parliament House in Canberra.

So, yes there's not much to visit, but the important thing is that it's not considered an official embassy by the Australian Government and its very existence has been difficult since its creation : it was removed several times and suffered from numerous attacks.

I saw a few panels next to the tent but I wasn't really understanding why they were for. So I entered the tent and talked with the person who was inside, an Aborigine, and he explained me a few things about their fight and why they protest. What shocked me the most was the Story of the Stolen Generations, the children of Australian Aboriginal descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions from 1905 to 1969. I knew that story, but not in the details, and I had not been told this by someone linked to the Stolen Generations. It helped me to understand this with another point of view.

But if Aboriginal people are still have to protest for such obvious things, that means the fight won't end soon and it saddens me a bit.

Today's destination was Melbourne. The path took me four hours, but this time, no atypic monuments to visit, unlike in Canberra, where I encountered an indigenous person in the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. There were still some exciting  sites to visit and I didn't want to travel again to another city just after that (yes, Australia's a huge country.)

I stayed three days. Howeverw it wasn't too much to visit everything (or almost everything). The most interesting places in Melbourne were :

- Flinders Street railway station, my starting point.

- The Shrine of Remembrance, built as a memorial to the men and women of Victoria who served in World War I, and  now a memorial to all Australians who have served in war.

- Federation Square, a mixed-use development in the inner city, which really regroups lots of things, like cinemas, a museum, exposition spaces, auditoriums, restaurants, shops, a giant screen... I didn't see anything but it took me a while anyway.

- The Royal Exhibition Building, one of the last remaining major 19th-century exhibition buildings in the world.

- State Library of Victoria, which holds over 2 million books and 16,000 serials, including the diaries of the cities founders, John Batman (yes, Batman) and John Pascoe Fawkner, and the folios of Captain James Cook.

This time, my new destination just took me two days to visit : it was Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, and the fifth-most populous city of Australia. But unfortunately, I didn't learn exciting things going to Mount Lofty, the University of South Australia, St Peter's Cathedral, Victoria Square or the Elder Park, because much of this aren't cultural sites.Moreover, it was raining and a storm arrived when I finished my visit

(I took somebody else's photo, on the Internet. I couldn't take one because it was raining.)

I wanted to go to Perth next but it was too far to go in bus and I didn't have any plane tickets. OK, these were the worst two days of this trip. I guess every location I visit next will be better, compared to this. And, oh, "coincidently", I love my next destination.

Today I saw Uluru, or Ayers Rock a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory in central Australia.

The route was even longer this time : I travelled during the day and arrived at the sunset. It was fascinating. And something else gave a part of magic to this amazing moment : two Aborigines began to play didgeridoo, and I listened to them for an hour, until I decided to go back to Sydney to take my plane.