To accomodate for my first five nights in Australia I have just booked a bed in a 4 share (male) room at the Perth City YHA for $ 140,- (± � 81,-). Because -at the time of arrival- I will be a YHA member, I saved $ 17.50. That may not seem much, but as I intend to travel for about three months this may prove to sum up to a nice total

According to the YHA site this is Western Australia’s only 4.5 star backpacker hostel. The hostel is set inside a renovated 1940s art deco building in the heart of the city, and has everything a traveller could want. Facilities include air conditioning, wifi, internet, parking, games room, pool, kitchen, library, TV room, laundry, secure lockers, luggage storage, 24 hour reception, café. It is affordable but superior backpacker accommodation – winner of Western Australia Tourism award for Best Backpacker Accommodation 2007.

A good thing the hostel fascilitates WiFi as well. As I plan on buying a car in the first few days it is very helpfull there is WiFi access available within the hostel.

Poste Restante is an international postal convention, operating routinely in Australia , as in most countries. Many travellers in Australia rely on it, but many others, particularly non-English speakers, seem not to be aware of it here. Australia Post will reliably hold mail marked “poste restante” for at least a month at any Post Office or agency anywhere in Australia – longer if the sender indicates a different period. There may be a fee for parcels held longer than one month.

For Poste Restante the following address convention may be used:

[ Your Given name + FAMILY NAME in large print]
Poste Restante
[TOWN] – [state] Australia – [postcode, if possible]

I just ordered a 1 year YHA (youth hostel accomodation) membership (which offers you a 10% discount per night in a YHA hostel) for which I used the following poste restante address:

Poste Restante
GPO
Perth
WA 6000

Where GPO means General Post Office. When I arrive in Perth I can just collect my mail at the post office

As of 6:48 this morning it’s spring All over the world day takes as long as night as the sun is now positioned exactly above the Equator. The Northern Hemisphere is now on it’s way to summer. For Australia (and the other countries in the Southern Hemisphere) it is exactly different as now it’s Autumn Equinox over there so they are moving to winter. Which means I will be traveling from early spring into early autumn. Lucky for me Austrlia lies in more tropical regions than Europe

In adition to the start of spring, I just got an SMS message forwarded that a friend from years ago (who is now living in Wellington, NZ) just got a son: Nolan Huia van Proosdij; congratulations mate

Since it was about 1.5 years since our last weekend away, it was definitely due time to book an apartment somewhere for another ‘bikkelweekend‘ of films, booze, blufpoker and nonsense talk. This year we went to -of all places- Den Helder:

Landal Greenparks

Landal Greenparks

Landal Greenparks

This year’s participants were Wouter, Colin, Arjan, Joost, Marten and yours truly.

^{from left to right: Joost (aka Slipper aka ‘flipflop’), Colin (aka DPPV) and Wouter (aka WHB)}

Unfortunately Bas and Guus were unable to make it due to lousy excuses; next time you guys really don’t have any excuses left to use. Question is though, when will the next time be? I will of course move to Australia and Colin to Boston. Perhaps a bikkelweekend in Singapore in 2009?

^{whb and his rope}

After someone else rejected the rent of my house (she prefered a central heating system instead of the gas stove I have in my living room) yesterday’s contestant accepted the rent. It’s odd that in less than a month this will not be my house anymore, but Babiche will live here instead. Ah well, she’s lucky to be able to obtain such a nice house; I’m sure she will enjoy her stay

After having worked for over 2.5 years at TomTom, today was my last day in the office. Oddly enough today is a monday; but that’s due to the fact that I still got 19 holiday leave days left which counts back to today. It felt a bit weird, walking out of the office, never coming back to work; but I’m looking forward towards an interesting adventure abroad… I’ll definitely keep a keen eye on the progress TomTom will make in the future

As the departure to Oz is drawing near and I’ve now got some readers from Ireland, UK, Australia and Canada and possibly other readers abroad at a later stage, I will hereby switch from Dutch to English