Sydney

The Harbour bridge; view from The Rocks to North Sydney	The Harbour bridge at night; seen from the opera hourse
The Sydney Opera House, the down town, and the Royal Botanic Garden	The Sydney down town, and the Royal Botanic Garden from a harbour cruise ship.

Sydney -> Melbourne

Although we spent some time over Xmas in Kiama, 150km south of Sydney, the next photographs are made later, further south in NSW.

Naroma, NSW, the view from our motel balcony.	The Eden Bay, again the view from the balcony of our motel (still in NSW).
The northern end of the Nine Miles Beach of the Ben Boyd National Park near Eden, NSW.	The Lakes NP, VIC; on-board of the Robena, we got a really nice trip with a very interesting talk on the nature, ecology, natives, and history. This trip was very different from the typical tourist boat trips.

Melbourne

In Melbourne, we spent a couple of days over New Years Eve.


St. Kilda and the Port Philips Bay as seen from the Rialto Tower (which is the highest building of the southern hemisphere, they say). The downdown of Melbourne is located at the Yarra River, not right next to the ocean.
At the Healesville Sanctuary (near Melbourne), we saw several animals which are living only in Australia, like Platypuses, Wallabies (right Photo), Tasmanien Devils (left photo), Koalas, Snakes, Birds, and of course Kangaroos.

Great Ocean Road, and Tasmania


At the Loch Ard Gorge (Pt. Campbell NP, VIC), we saw The Tempest. This is just the right setting for such a play, since it was also the setting of ship desaster about 100 years ago.		The Wine Glass Bay, Freixenet NP, Tasmania. This was just another beautiful NP, this time on Tasmania. In contrast to the weather one day before, the water was pleasently refreshing ;).

Seoul

On my way back to Frankfurt, I spent half a day in Seoul. It was quite a difference to the Australien summer, since Seoul just experienced heavy snowfalls and it was very cold. Additional information on what we see in the photographs comes from Sung-Jun Jung of the Seoul National University (thanks!).

Due to the lack of sleep after a long flight, and the difficulties remembering names which are not at all familiar, I ended up way outside of the down town of Seoul near the National Assembly building. The statue shows "Great King SeJong", who invented the "Han gul" letters in 1443 (AD).

Finally, I made it to the downtown. The Dae Han Mun gate is a gate to the Kyung Hee palace near the city hall. (The other Seoul photos still wait for scanning).