Elad’s blog

The Habad Evening was very nice. There were some 20 Israelies, and I had so much meat (only chicken wings and Kebab-like meat balls, but very tasty) and - at last - a decent salad, that it was really fun. Most of the Israelies here just came from New-Zealand, so I enjoyed hearing their stories.

Today the storm was over. I woke up in the morning, and the sky were blue sprouted with a few white clouds - really nice. The air was also very clean, with this after-rain smell all over.

My money arrived at last, and I spent an hour or so at the bank just convincing them they should give me interest for their right to keep my money - it’s amazing how banks are the same everywhere! Anyway, from not wanting to give me anything we ended up when they grant me 4.5% interest as long as I have more than a certain amount of money in my account. I think that’s better than a PAKAM in Israel right now, and I can take the money out any time I need it!
From there I started looking for a car. I found some candidates (see details at the previous post, and please give me your advices). Tomorrow I will probably take a car for an inspection, and hopefully buy one.
If that will work fine I will probably spend Saturday preparing the car for a long travel, and will leave Sydney early next week.

Hi!
Here are some details of the three Frod Falcon St./Wagon candidates, from which I will probably buy one tomorrow.
Please tell me which one you think I should buy.
Note, that this is just primary inspection, I did not yet take any car to a mechanics for a professional inspection, which of course I’ll do before buying a car.
(All currency is Australian$)
All cars are from the early 90’s and have between 260,000-280,000
1) For 1200$ I can get a scratched red car with some rust, broken mirror and a problem in the reverse. Fixing this should cost some additional 300$. The good news is that it has REGO (which is equivalent for TEST+COMPULSORY INSURANCE) for an entire year, so it won’t pose any problem when selling it. Moreover, its rego is from West-Australia country, which is the best.
2)For 2250$ I can get a yellow car with minor bump and one wheel-plate that is broken, but no serious visible problems. This car has REGO of NSW (the worst REGO), but it is until the end of December - which should be enough for me to sell it.
3)For 2500$ I can get a very good looking car, which belongs to an Israeli who works here (not a traveler), and at least for the last 2 years did only local rides, inside Sydney. It has a NSW rego for half a year - a bit less than the previous one.

Of course, I did not do any proffesional examination thus far. Which one looks the best for you?

Most of the day was dedicated to the New South Wales Art Gallery. I think it can be roughly considered a very good second-line art museum. This means, it is not in the same line with the top museums I’ve seen (like the european Louvre, British-Museum, Prado or Ufizi); but it can easily compete with every museum in Israel, and certainly outruns many many of them and many others.
The museum itself is a nice building, with three floors (They have here something about three-floor-museums). The lowest hosts Aboriginal art. The middle hosts contemporary art. The uppermost hosts Australian art of the 19th and 20th centuries (classic style paintings with strong english influence, and topics such as australian landscapes and interesting portraits), as well as some classics every big art museum holds (there was the essential Van-Gogh, Monet, Pissaro and Touluz-Lutrec; as well as some European paintings from the 16th up to the 19th century, mainly of English painters). I even found there one Yosl-Bergner - it turned out he lived a few years in Australia, during the 1940’s and 1950’s, before he came to Israel.
I concentrated, of course, in the Aboriginal galleries. Their paintings use very thick lines and dots, strong colors, and they use interesting materials, such as Eucaliptus barks instead of canvas. Their topics are also interesting - some of them describe local legends, and some are just abstract figures.

The museum itself is located in the middle of the Royal Botanic Parks, which are very lovely and I had around an hour walk through them, until the rain started again (I think the storm is about to over, though. In the afternoon there was a rainbow in the sky, and there was noticably less rain today than in the past few days).

At the afternoon I had this headeche evolving, so I went back to my hostel and slept for an hour. I also made some laundry there, and now I will go to the Israeli Evening (free Bar-B-Que) Habad house is holding tonight.

From the aquarium I went to the museum of natural history, which hides under the name ‘Australia Museum’. It is a big building, with three floors. The first hosts skeletons, the second hosts minerals, and the third - most interesting- holds stuffed animals and fossils, as well as models of dinosaurs and some other extinct creatures. Actually, after the aquarium I wasn’t too impressed with this museum, but I did grab there some interesting insights. For example, I never noticed that a dinosaur had so many vertebraes in its tail, or that the bones of a bird are so fragile and light compared to those of a reptile (I theoretically knew that, but looking at the bones is completely different). I also got a nice close look to some of the animals that extincted in Australia some 11,000 years ago (the main reason the Aboriginals never evolved out of stone-age is that they never developed agriculture. This probably happened because there weren’t good enough plants or any big mammals in native Australia; and this is probably closely related to mass extinctions that killed all of Australia’s big mammals some 11,000 years ago. I’ll write more about that on a different time).
I learned that the oldest evidence to the presence of man in Australia was not skeletons or bones - it was the existence of stone knives, found at an archaeological site here. The knives are dated to some 2,000 years prior to the first bone that was found - this does enable a suspicious mind to develop a conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?

After I finished the museum, I decided to walk back rather than take a bus. It is quite a walk, because my hostel is really far from the city center, but it stopped raining and I really enjoyed the walk. On the way I bought myself fish’n'chips, which is most common food here, and just eaten while walking. It was really nice. Now I’ll go to a supermarket to buy some things, and than back to the hotel to find something to do in the evening.
Since I can’t buy the car until I get the money, tomorrow will probably also be devoted to some nice city aspect - probably art galleries if it will rain, or perhaps city parks if the weather is good. I also noticed a dive center here, but this will surely wait until the storm is over and maybe until my next arrival to Sydney.
At the mean time, just have a look at a typical australian waiting for the storm to end:

First there were plants. Then, there were invertebraes and the world was ruled by marine worms.

And some 400 milion years ago the cartilage-fish were created.

Older than any bony fish, much older than any reptile, mammal or a bird, the sharks rule the oceans for 400 milion years. Quite a period.
And through all those years, they continued to evolve and to adopt to their environment, until nowadays probably no living animal can compete with them when it comes for adaptation.
Take, for example, their six senses: sight - 10 times better than a cat’s. hearing - over a kilometer in the open ocean. Not to mention taste, feel, smell and of course - electromagnetism, the sixth sense of a shark . They have much more interesting features, though. For example, the skin of a shark is not covered with KASKASIM, like a normal fish. Rather, sharks have dentricles - tiny tooth-shaped organs, covering their bodies and making their skin very rough (actually, in ancient china people were using shark’s skin instead of glossy paper for their woodcrafts). Or their liver. The most important thing for any fish is not to drawn (fish always face the risk of being crushed to the sea-floor and be smashed by the pressure of water if they go too deep). Most fish have this organ, a ‘bouyant gland’ which is full of air and keeps them in neutral bouyant. Most fish - but not sharks. They have an amazingly huge liver, that takes up to 90% of their belly volume, and they can produce in it special oil that is lighter than water and keeps them in exactly the right depth. Very sophisticated.
All this shark info is not present at Sydney’s oceanarium. There, they simply show you plenty of sharks. Here are a few examples:

Actually, of the 400 species of sharks, only 4 are really dangerous for man. I wander if I’ll ever see one of them. Meanwhile, I was just watching the sharks.

Another extremely interesting animal in the aquarium is the platipus (BARVAZAN). Considered taboo by the aboriginals, this rare mammal (who lay eggs, and acts like the wierdest combination between fish and bird) is actually so wierd that they did put some explanation about it on the aquarium (after all, it’s not a common shark). For example, it has double-layered fur, which is water repellent and keep its skin dry when it dives. But the most interesting feature is that when the platipus dives, it closes its eyes (so they won’t get wet), shuts its nostrlis and ears, and rely for his pray only on - you guessed right - electromagnetism. The platipus actually feels the electric pulses created by the heartbeats of the fish and crabs it is eating, and it is praying based on this sense alone. And it had succesfully done so for thousands of years!

Beside these animals there are plenty of marine creatures there. From cold sea fish (Did you know that fish in Antarctica has antifreeze fluid in their blood, and survive at water as cold as 3 degrees?) to coral marine life, and even some other things - like seals and small penguins. There’s even a crocodile with a funny sign on the top of its pool:

I spent in the aquarium the first half of the day. It was raining outside - but the aquarium is all covered, so it was really nice and I really, really, enjoyed it. I am already looking forward to diving here. The next half of the day I continued my exploration on Australia’s animals, by visiting the ‘Australia museum’, which is actually a natural-history museum. About this visit - see the next post.

I just figured out:
1) I didn’t really enjoy since I got to Australia (at least not since yesterday’s evening).
2) I have to wait here at least one or two more days before I have the money to buy a car and get going (mom and dad, if you didn’t get the message from one of my friends: I need some money. Please read dad’s email or phone Oded).
Therefore -
Tomorrow will be dedicated to having fun. I won’t be looking for a car, nor do any other non-urgent things. If I’m stuck at Sydney, at least I’ll enjoy it.
If it rains, I’ll go to a museum or some art gallery. Otherwise I’ll go to the botanic gardens or something. I don’t know if I should visit the oceanarium at rain - is it closed there, or are there also open pools?

Regarding the car - I now tend to go for a falcon staishen, which is probably easier to drive than a van and if I get stuck I can pull the back seats and sleep there. I’m not sure, though, and may find myself ending up in a van.

Evil has many faces.

Take, for example, Uzi. This is an Israeli guy, who owns some 30 appartements here at Sydney, and lives from giving them in very cheap prices to Israeli travelers. They are what is called ‘the Israeli appartments’ and go from traveler to traveler. Usually you rent a place in the appartment, and the Israelies group together. It goes by hearsays from one to the other.

My bed last night was in a VILA that belongs to him. It is a really big place (16 beds in 5 bedrooms; two floors; private backyard), all equipped (t.v., kitchen tools, whatever), very centrally located, and half empty - it currently hosts 7 Israelied, 3 girls and 4 boys (me excluded).

I should have guessed something was wrong. It was just a little too dirty. There was a bit too much cigarette smoke in the air. Some of the lightbulbs were not functioning and nobody cared to replacing them.
The guys were very friendly and inviting. They where really keen to help, gave me good advices, showed me where there is everything here. They are here for several months - three or four, most of them, except one who arrived 10 days ago after 8 months in India.

And in the evening they put out the drugs.

It was an amazing drug-cave. All had their joints, sharing bangs(you know the name of Thailnad’s capital? correct guess! it’s Bang-Kok), sharing wine, cigarettes and marihuanna (only “SAMIM KALIM”, not that such a thing exists). I was pretty terrified, though of course I didn’t show it. If it hadn’t been raining outside, I would probably leave at that moment.
Only that in the evening began heavy rain, which continued all night and went on and off today for the entire day.

For example, there is this guy from Yavne. Four months in Sydney, and he still didn’t “have the time” to see the Opera house, or any other attraction here. Or this girl from Holon, three months here, and still planning her tour. Or the boy from Kfar-Saba, who came from Melbourne (after being there for two months in an Israeli appartment) and for over a week is planning to go to the half-day tour of the ‘blue mountains’, near Sydney.
Is this what the kids are looking for in their post-army tour?

First thing at the morning I called the house-keeper and told him I wanted to leave because there was too much smoking in the appartment. He was very polite, but explained to me that it’s like that in all the appartments - this is what Israelies ate hiring appartments for.
So I spent some hours looking for a backpacker guesthouse, until I found one that looks nice. I also went to open a bank account, and that sort of sums up all the day.
Tomorrow I will start to look more seriously for a vehicle - I still haven’t decided if I want a van or a falcon. I’m not afraid about meeting people, because there are plenty of van-parks throughout Australia, with all the facilities; but I think driving a normal private car would be easier, and since I’m only one person, I don’t really need a van.
I also want to go and see Sydney’s attraction (I still didn’t see the Opera house), but that will probably wait till the storm is over - and maybe to my next visit here, at the end of my Australian journey.

So Australia didn’t start that good - I hope tomorrow will be better.

Hi Everybody!
I sniffed around a bit, and these are the possibilities in the car market here:

1) I can buy myself a VAN, equipped with anything including bed and cooking stuff.
2) I can buy myself a ford falcon stashen, which is a big car very common here.
3) I can buy a holden, which is another stashen wagon, although a bit less popular.

The main advantage of a van is that it saves a lot of money in sleeping (sleeping here costs 20$-25$ a day in the cheapest dorms, so it is a lot of money), and it allows easy camping.
Besides this, the market here is really good - I expect to buy the vehicle at about 2000$, including the test.

I wanted your advice - what would be best for me to buy?

Thanks everybody!