Following the tracks of great explorers
Terra Australis, this is how the Europeans called Australia – even before the legendary seaman James Cook hit its East coast in 1770 on his way back from Tahiti. Australia stands for adventure, for bloodcurdling pioneer stories, for the legendary Aborigines, for inexhaustible natural resources, for luxuriant vegetation, as well as desolate, almost unending deserts, for a very individual and interesting animal kingdom including kangaroos, koalas, cockatoos (galahs), crocodiles and camels. The living conditions of this continent – by the way, the smallest continent on earth – are pretty hostile, and range from devastating bush fires and long periods of drought, to cyclones, tornados, torrential rains, extreme floods, temperatures reaching up to 50°C in the shade, and a merciless sun. Furthermore, Australia is the home of various poisonous animals, especially spiders, scorpions, and snakes, some of which can be very dangerous, not only to mankind.
Australia’s aborigines enabled us to become acquainted with “dreamtime”. This is precisely one reason of many which may explain our desire to experience and explore this legendary, peregrine, and literally boundless part of Mother Earth.
Red Earth Expedition
(The longest camel expedition in the Australian history)
Within the scope of our Great Journey, we spent the last four years travelling trough the endless lands of the Australian Outback. We crossed the continent from South to North, and from the West coast to the East coast – all in all 7.000 kilometres on foot along with our own camels. It was a daring enterprise, uncertain its outcome from the very beginning. An adventure of superlatives, a journey into the yet unknown inner of a mystical and mythical country. An expedition forcing us to overcome the limits of our physical and mental capability.
Our account on this journey is a genuine, exciting, and informative story, with which we hope to be able to give a better understanding for a country so amazing in its beauty and size, it can hardly be grasped.
Often enough, we felt as if we were on a march through heaven and hell, with ups and downs, making us believe we would not see the next day. Yet, we also experienced it as a time allowing us to become one with the red soil of Australia and with Mother Nature. It was a time we would never want to miss, a time making infinity appear within reach. This seemingly never ending march was a special challenge for us. It meant living for the moment. It meant being granted the possibility to share one of the greatest emotions given to mankind on this earth. We see it as the greatest gift as well as the ultimate goal, the essence of it being to live life and inhale it with every breath we take.
Do come and join us on our adventurous journey. Allow yourself to experience an expedition through mystical Australia and to share our emotions by visiting our current accounts in the category “Journal/Australia”.
Adding up our camel trips through the Desert Sinai, through wild Pakistan, through Death Desert in West China, through Gobi Desert in Mongolia, and through all of Australia, we have covered a total of almost 12.000 kilometres together with camels. Here we hold a world record in the history of human expeditions.
Not only the travelling itself is of importance to us, but also the prospect of being able to give the western world a better understanding of differing cultural and philosophical values and views. Of course, we also use it as a means to break out of a society ruled by laws and regulations. For us it has become one of those life pilgrimages where the search for the own self, for the own roots and for the way to consciously learn to live for the moment plays an invaluable role.
I have put together my accounts on our often dramatical, but also unique and wonderful expedition life in four books totalling 1.200 pages (Preparatory works, Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3). If you wish to read it you’re welcome to do so in the category “Journal/Australia”.
Australia 1999-2003
Longest camel expedition in the history of Australia. Within the scope of the “Great Journey”, Tanja and Denis Katzer spent the past four years travelling through the endless and vast territory of the Australian Outback. They worked their way through the continent from South to North, and form the East coast to the West coast – 7000 kilometres, by foot or on the back of their own camels.