I've had a lot of requests for pictures, updates, additions to a mailing list etc. so I figured it'd just be easier to start a little blog and whoever wants to can check it out.
So I've been out traveling now for almost a month. It's weird to think that much time has gone by already, only 3 1/2 to go! I've spent time in Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, down the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians and am now finally in Adelaide till the weekend. This is going to be a fairly long post, so read it in sections if you want or just skim through it.
Sydney - Nov 3-10
Sydney was a great city - always something going on and people were always dressed to the nines, even on a Tuesday night (I have no idea where they were going!). My hostel was downtown Sydney and within walking distance of the iconic landmarks such as the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and a ferry or short bus ride away from Bondi or Manly Beach and the Toranga Zoo. I met a bunch of cool people in city and definitely took advantage of the deals in the bar connected to the hostel. I also happened to win 10 free nights at any Base hostel - thank you limboing skills! I enjoyed two aquariums, a wildlife park, the zoo, the Sydney Tower and just wandering around enjoying the sights. It was a pretty cool place to start my trip off at.
I almost forgot, I also did a day tour out to the Blue Mountains. I've posted some pictures on FB if you haven't seen them yet. It was a pretty cool tour and I saw kangaroos in the wild for the first time. A pleasant day of hiking and beautiful views :)
Melbourne - Nov 10-15
Next I flew down to Melbourne. Australia has amazing domestic flight service and this hour and a half flight only cost me 60$ (makes me wish Canada had something like this!). Melbourne is the second largest Australian city and had a completely different vibe from Sydney. I stayed in the suburb of St. Kilda which is right next to the ocean and the area was all about being laid back, enjoying happy hour, and catching some sun by the beach (even though it is only spring here). I spent a day by the beach, two days downtown taking in the sights such as graffiti'd alleyways, the Australian Centre for Moving Images Museum which was incredibly cool, and wandering around sports centers and random skyscrapers with huge, bullet-proof glass rooms in the bathrooms for ones viewing pleasure. I met some fun people in my hostel and stayed in a room with all boys (...lovely..) and I finally picked up a pretty little cellphone - so now I can keep in touch with all of you! I also happened to run into Kellen and Laine while I was down there. Cool that you can be 14,000km away from home yet see people you grew up or partied with back in Sask.
Tasmania - Nov 15-19
After a solid five days in Melbourne, I jumped back on a plane and headed down to the lonely little island of Tasmania. Poor Tasy, gets kicked around by "true" Australia and many jokes can be heard about inbreeding, two-heads, and being a redneck. I didn't find this was the case at all, except for at our first hostel where I thought Reid and I were going to get... I don't even know what. We got to the hostel and the lights were out and reception was closed. We wandered up the stairs and found toothless Jimmy chilling out in a ratty old grandpa chair slurping up his noodles through the gaps in his mouth. Apparently having no teeth had some affect on his verbalization skills because I could barely understand what he was saying. Throughout the challenge of his pronounciation I managed to understand that the hostel was closed for the night and there was nothing we could do. So we retreated back down the creeky staircase and into the bar where we met the relationship-in-the-process-of-ending and kicked-to-the-curb homeless record producer. Right. You own a record company is Launceston, Tasmania... population 100, 000. He also informed us the hostel was closed but he was going to go talk to someone and get them to call the manager at home. Odd that he was holding a cellphone in his hand while he said this, and when he went upstairs, he was only relaying our story to toothless Jimmy. So we stood around waiting and Buddy comes back downstairs to inform us that he has an entire room to himself and there's no problem if we want to stay there. So we nod and climb back up the stairs to his room, which consequently has one childsized bunkbed amongst the others, a cracked and padlocked door, and broken shelves next to a mirror. This place looks like a real 5 star resort! (it was only later that Reid informed me that the rating of this place on hostelworld was 20% - whaat??). I was feeling a little creeped out by this point, and the hammer on the nail was when I realized there was no clothing or personal accessories lying near or on the bed Buddy said he was sleeping in. Reid and I exchanged glances, grabbed our bags and headed back down the rickety old staircase, out the door and past Toothless Jimmy suckin on a sinstick outside. We practically ran around the corner away from him and as we were approaching the car, TJ was following right behind us. I pretty much shotputted my 18kg backpack into the trunk of the car and we were out of there in a flash. When we finally came back to Launceston, we went back to the hostel (during daylight hours) and got our 4$ deposit back and the place didn't seem quite as shady.. night really does make everything much scarier I guess.
But... after that shaky start to Tasmania, the rest of the week was glorious (aside from sleeping and living out of a car for five days, but in its own way that was even pretty cool). We drove up to the East Coast and checked out the Bay of Fires and Binalong Beach where turquoise water and white-sand beaches were in abundance. A little bit of a darker twist were all the dead birds washed up on shore. Apparently these are all the poor souls that couldn't quite make the migration from Siberia and died of exhaustion.
We continued down the East Coast the entire day (in Tasy, roads are narrow, curvy, and instead of 100km/hr it's literally 1km/min, but luckily everything is close together) and saw a cool Blowhole at Bicheno and watched a breathtaking yellow and pink sunset. We arrived at a lookout point where we spent the night (this one was quite cold and I didn't sleep very well) but it was worth it to wake up at 5am and watch the sunrise over the beach and rugged coastline. We headed on down to Port Arthur and spent the afternoon checking out the Port Arthur Historic site which is the memorial and remnants of the Convicts who were shipped to Australia in the 1800s from England. The history of this place was quite remarkable and it was a well-spent afternoon.
That evening we backpedalled a bit and drove off the peninsula towards Hobart where we slept almost at the top of Mt. Wellington (1271m above sea level). We had another really cold night and enjoyed a brief snowstorm at the top before things cleared up and we had a spectacular view of the city of Hobart, the biggest city in Tasy with a population of roughly 200,000 people. We headed back down and hit up the CADBURY CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!!!! I was super excited. It was less than ten bucks for a tour (not of the actual factory floor though) but we got lots of free chocolate and I bought 600grams of "Not-Quite-Perfect" chocolate in their store for only 3$AUD. Next we stopped at the Cascade Brewery for Reid but all tours were done for the day so we headed down to the Tahune Forest Airwalk, but once again, arrived just before closing. It was about 5pm so we decided to start driving up to the west coast and get a head start on the next day at Cradle Mountain. We spent 6 hours driving and saw quite a variety of wildlife (there are warnings everywhere for wildlife at night as many of the animals are nocturnal). We saw Wallaby's, Kangaroos, Quolls, and Wombats galore. We stopped in Queenstown around 11 (the biggest city (2400) on the West Coast) and continued through the moutains to Cradle where we slept in the parking lot. We were up early and drove down to Dove Lake where we began a tricky hike up to Marion's Point. It was so rocky that at one point there was a metal chain connected to a few pegs to help pull ourselves up on. But the view was completely worth the climb and I wish I had been one of the lucky ones to do a several day hike through the mountains. After that I did a 6km hike around Dove Lake and then Reid and I headed back to Launceston to return the car and fly back to Melbourne.
Melbourne (again) - Nov 19-20
I spent another two nights in Melbourne, this time at a Base hostel where I put to good use two of my free nights accomodation. I met some really cool people in the room and after chilling out for the day, skyping people and relaxing, we headed out for a good time on the city. We hit up the Lucky something or other which had two floors and played separate music on each and then to the Electric Lady Lounge where we were graced by the presence of 90% nude women paintings along the walls. The night wouldn't be complete without some delightful Aussie McD's and the swapping of a Sask shirt for a Gaelic football-something-or-other jersey. Definitely some bonds being created between Irish and Canadian international relations but unfortunately I just couldn't give up my green SK shirt and swapped back - too bad because the Irish jersey would have been pretty cool to keep!
Great Ocean Road/Grampians Tour - Nov 21-23
The next three days I put to use two 95$ day-trip vouchers I had won my first time around in Melbourne and took a three day trip down the Southern Coast of Australia and up to Adelaide. Day 1 consisted of checking out the Great Ocean Road, the 12 Apostles as well as the now fallen down London Bridge. I spent some birthday cash on a pretty cool 6 minute helicopter ride down the coast to check out the apostles. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out these photos:
http://www.google.com.au/images?q=The+12+apostles&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1126&bih=419
In the evening we stopped at the Coogee Wildlife park where we got to wander around with buckets of bread feeding all the animals. We fed wallabys, red kangaroos, emus, deer, ducks and all sorts of animals. Next we got to cuddle and hug a snake, baby koala, baby wallaby and baby wombat. The koala is as soft as you think he would be. He felt like a little teddy bear. I'm such a softy for animals and this, I think, has been the highlight of my trip so far. I almost tucked that baby koala into my sweater and ran off with him!
The next two days we drove up to the Grampians, a weathered and worn set of Mountains in Southern Oz. We did some hikes, checked out some waterfalls, saw some amazing scenic views and generally had a good time. In the evening we had a typical Ozzie Barbie and at some kangaroo meatballs. Pretty tasty I must say. After all this hiking, a few of us from the trip jumped on a bus and took a 6 hour ride up to Adelaide where I am currently at.
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