my last Australia adventures (for now)

Well, well, well.. I've been VERY busy since I last posted on here.  I spent 4 days in Sydney and 6 in Cairns last week, and best of all, my family came and visited!  Between time spent with them and time spent with my friends, I did and saw a ton over those 10 days.  Luckily, we had gorgeous, sunny weather and were able to see almost everything that we wanted to.  Since I could probably type forever about Sydney and Cairns, I'll use bullet points to try to keep it somewhat short.

• Sydney Aquarium- I went down to Sydney by myself because I heard that the aquarium was really good and I wanted to see it.  It ended up being really neat and I saw some platypuses, crocs, sharks, and more.  It definitely got me very excited to go to the reef!

• Harbour Cruise- Kelly, Katie, Adam and I went on a dinner cruise through Sydney's harbour and it ended up being amazing!  The food and company were great and seeing the skyline and area at night was pretty wonderful.  There was also a blues and jazz festival at Darling Harbour that we got to listen to and enjoy before we headed out on the cruise.  It was definitely a good weekend to be in Sydney.

• Wandering around the city-  On June 7th, my family arrived in Sydney!!  It was very exciting since I've been gone for 4 months and I couldn't have been happier to see them.  The first day we did a lot of wandering around Sydney, shopping at the markets, and seeing a bunch of the touristy spots.  Walking around with them was a lot of fun since all of the little things in Australia that I've become accustomed to were new and exciting for them so it was really entertaining (my dad's favorite phrases: 'how are you going?' and 'brilliant' and 'spot on' when handing correct change).  I forced them to stay up late the first night and see fireworks so that they would get on a normal schedule for the rest of the trip and not be too jet-lagged.

• My 21st Birthday!- Monday was my birthday (though it didn't feel like it at all) and it was great to be able to spend it in Australia with my family.  The timing couldn't have worked out better.  We spent the day doing a really nice coastal walk from Bondi Beach to Coogee Beach which allowed us to see a bunch of Sydney's beaches and enjoy the beautiful weather.  That evening we got to see the Opera House all lit up (the first couple weeks in June they were lighting it up with neat colors at night) and enjoy our last moments in Sydney.

• Cairns- On Tuesday morning we flew to Cairns to spend 6 days in it's wonderful 80 degree winter.  The city and surrounding area of Cairns are really awesome and the whole area is bordered by the beach and Coral Sea on one side and mountains on the other.  It is a very green and lush area, and we had tons of sunshine the whole trip!  The city itself is a fairly small, touristy city, but is a gateway to so many cool places around the area.  There were also lots of fields along the drive to our hotel where wallabies wandered free in, and the whole area seemed very laid-back as a whole.

• Our Hotel-  Our hotel was amazing.  It was super nice, beautiful, and had an awesome location right across the street from the beach.  We stayed in Trinity Beach, which is about 20 minutes north of Cairns and it was great because it was quiet and fairly secluded.  We were able to see some beautiful sunrises from our hotel and spent a handful of afternoons playing at the beach.

• Cairns Tropical Zoo-  The first day in Cairns we went to the zoo to see a bunch of Australian animals.  It ended up being a really good hands-on zoo where we saw pelican and crocodile feedings, a bird show, got to pet and feed kangaroos, and got to hold koalas!  Everyone really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun seeing all of the different animals.

• Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation-  Our first long day was spent going through the Daintree Rainforest in what ended up being a really good day.  We got to do a handful of rainforest walks where we saw all sorts of different trees, plants, and wildlife, and stopped at some beautiful lookouts along the way too.  On the way up north we did an hour long river cruise where we got to see crocodiles, snakes, birds, and frogs in the wild.  It was really neat seeing them in their natural habitats and kind of scary as well.  Our final destination of the trip was Cape Trip on a nice beach that you have to go through the rainforest to get to.  Turns out that the water there is not croc-free... yikes.  The drive there and back was very entertaining with Traci and my mom freaking out about driving through the mountains.

• Atherton Tablelands-  We decided to do a half day trip out to the Atherton Tablelands.. Little did we know, it is nearly impossible to do a half day trip there as it is quite the trek through the mountains to get anywhere worthwhile.  We ended up going to a couple of lakes (and seeing some turtles swimming around), seeing some gorgeous waterfalls, and stopping at a crater.  It really is beautiful up there and spending the day there was very worthwhile. 

• Great Barrier Reef-  Perhaps the most anticipated part of the trip was going to the Great Barrier Reef (at least for me).  I had been really excited about this for a long time and was so happy that we got to do it!  We had a 2 hour boat ride out to Michaelmas Cay which is one of the outer reef sites and was absolutely beautiful.  We had a couple hours to snorkel and we all had a blast exploring the reef.  I found that as soon as you got away from other people, there ended up being tons of amazing and unique fish and coral.  I saw so many cool things and was just in awe the entire time.  We did not want to leave when it was time.  It was such a neat experience and I'm so happy that I got the opportunity to see it.

Overall, the past week and a half was pretty incredible, and it's sad because it was my last trip of my time in Australia.  Now I only have just over a week before I'm at home, and that week is going to be spent studying for and taking finals (ick), as well as trying to hang out with all of my friends around Campus East.  Though I am so excited to see all of my family and friends and to be at home again, I am certainly going to miss a lot about Australia.  I've made some amazing friends here, gotten very adjusted to the laid-back and friendly aspect of Australian culture, and thoroughly enjoyed traveling to and seeing so many amazing places.  I feel like I've definitely grown as a person on this journey and will come back to the States as a much more independent and confident person than I was when I left.  While this journey is coming to an end, I feel like a lot more doors have been opened for me and I know that I'll be back to Australia in the future.  This is probably going to be my last blog entry, so for those of you who have kept up in it, I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures, and I can't wait to see you back at home soon!

Random Notes:

1.  There is a sizing difference in shoes and clothes here.  For example, if a girl was getting a small size in pants or a shirt, it would be size 8 here.  Similarly, I wear about a 7.5 at home in shoes and about a 37 here.

2.  Grades work differently here.  85-100 is an HD (high distinction), 75-85 is a D (distinction), and it keeps going down from there.  I've also discovered that grades aren't as important to people here and most people's goal is to pass their classes and don't see much need in doing better than that.

3.  Instead of talking about pictures, people here solely use the word 'photo'.  I like it.

4.  It isn't uncommon to wear black and brown together here, whereas at home people think it clashes.

5.  Short shorts are much more common in the general public and many guys wear them.  Something else that I've noticed is that about 95% of serious male runners that I see running are in running singlets

Paradise

Hey everyone!  This past weekend was definitely one of my favorites of the 15 that I've had in Australia so far, and I spent it at Hervey Bay and Fraser Island with two of my close friends here, Kelly and Nicole.  It was so nice to escape 'winter' and get to some beach weather, and we made sure that we embraced it and had an amazing weekend.

Our flight was early on Friday morning, so by 10am we were already checked into our hostel.  We quickly changed into our swimmers (swimsuits) and walked the 5 minutes to the beach.  It turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day and we spent a good 4.5 hours hanging out at the beach.  Somehow it is the first time since I got to Australia that I actually devoted a day to the beach--it was wonderful!  The water wasn't too cold either, and unlike the beaches in Wollongong, there were basically no waves.  The rest of the day was spent wandering around, and later on Nicole and I went for a run and ran on the beach while watching the sunset.. it was perfect.

Saturday morning we left for the most anticipated part of the trip--our tour of Fraser Island!  We had heard so much about Fraser and how amazing everyone thought that it was, so we were very anxious to see it for ourselves.  It ended up being an amazing tour, and while I originally had wanted to do the self-drive tour, I'm so glad that we did a guided one as Fraser is quite the dangerous place!  Fraser island is about 123km long and 15km wide, and is the world's largest sand island.  This means that there are no roads on the island--how cool!  However, it makes driving quite scary, as the highway is a beach, and many people crash, get taken out to sea, flip over, and much more.  I was happy to be in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing instead of people like me who don't know how to drive on sand.  It also is home to 5 of the 10 deadliest snakes in the world, tons of deadly spiders, has jellyfish, stingrays, and sharks at its ocean shore, and houses vicious dingos!  How awesome is this place!?

We got lucky and had a fantastic guide and a really great group.  Our guide Fabian (Fab) is probably the best tour guide that I've had in Australia and really wanted us to have a great experience.  He went out of his way to show us parts of the island that aren't part of the tour, and was just really accommodating all around.  We had 16 people in our tour, as opposed to the normal 40 people that they get during peak season in the summer.  We had a group of about 7 of us who got along really well and I met really nice people from England, the States, Canada, and Germany.. We all clicked really well and it made for an awesome two days that we didn't want to end.  This plus good weather made the trip amazing.  We lucked out and while it did a bit of raining, the sun managed to come out strongly at each part of the trip where we were doing exploring, it worked out perfectly.

The first day we went to two perch lakes on the island, meaning that they consist solely of rain water.  The first, Basin Lake, was nice, but nothing too special, though it was really neat to see.  In between lake stops, we went to Central Station, an old logging station, where we did a bit of hiking and had lunch.  We walked along the Whispering Creek, where we were able to see some eels and fish swimming around.  The walks were very pretty and relaxing.  The second lake that we stopped at, Lake McKenzie, was absolutely amazing.  The water was crystal clear and so pure that you could drink it..  We took pictures underwater with Kelly's camera and it looks like they were taken from inside a swimming pool, it is incredible.  Also, the sand at Lake McKenzie is so fine that it can exfoliate your skin and polish jewelry--how neat is that?! We spent a long time playing in the water and on the beach and had a blast.  We clearly did not want to leave this place and I could have spent so much time there, especially on a hot summer day.  

The second day had a lot more packed into it, and in the morning we drove on the 75 mile beach highway, so basically just on the beach, and stopped at a bunch of places along the way.  One of the places was Eli Creek, where we stopped for a bathroom break.  This cool creek had super clear water and if you wanted to get to the bathroom you had to walk through it.  We didn't spent much time there before heading to the Maheno shipwreck, a ship that crashed along the shore of Fraser over 50 years ago and has never moved and is fully rusted over now.. it is pretty neat.  One other little stop was to see the colored sands of the Pinnacles, which is basically some huge sand cliffs made of the same sand that is in 72 different shades of colors.  It was pretty remarkable.  Finally we made it to one of the big stops of the day, Indian Head, where we did a 15 minute hike up to the top of this cliff that looked over the beach on either side of it.  The view was remarkable and the weather was amazing.  We spent a lot of time up there just admiring the view.

Afterwards, we headed another 5 minutes up the coast where we were going to stop for lunch.  While Fab got lunch together we went and swam in the Champagne Pools, which are little rock pools along the side of the ocean.  Though they consist of sea water that is washed up, they were surprisingly not that cold, though they had lots of sharp rocks in them.  We hung out along the beach there for a while before heading back to have a yummy lunch.  While doing more driving, we saw a huge sea turtle and two dingos along the way!  It was pretty exciting stuff..  Our last big stop was a place not on the itinerary that Fab took us to just because he thought we should see it and it ended up being very worthwhile.  We went to a place called the Rainbow Gorge which is a sandblow, meaning it is basically dunes made up of sand that has been blown up from the ocean over the years and is constantly changing and being blown around.  This sand is on top of what used to be a forest, so it's pretty neat.  The best part about the Rainbow Gorge is that it's a place that very few people know about, so there was no one there and absolutely no footprints anywhere, it was so neat.  We felt like we were in the scene from the Lion King through the boneyard on the way to where the hyenas live.. it was pretty cool haha.  Really though, the sand was beautiful and in all sorts of neat patterns, and it was neat being in such a pure place.  Definitely a cool experience.

While a quick recap doesn't do the place justice, Fraser Island was an amazing place and I would have loved to have been able to spend more time there, but unfortunately we had to get back to Wollongong for classes since this is the last week of school--I can't believe it's here already!  And the crazy part is that in less than 5 days my family will be here and we'll be in Sydney and in Cairns, and then before I know it I'll be heading home.  While I'll be sad to leave Australia, I can't wait to see all of you at home!  Hope everyone is doing well, I miss you guys!

Random Notes:

1.  A remarkable amount of people smoke in Australia, though their cigarette packages show disgusting pictures of peoples organs being ruined from smoking.. I think it's a pretty good idea, though it doesn't seem to affect people much.

2.  They are set on making sure that people don't crash due to tiredness here.  There are signs on highways that say "don't die for a deadline, manage fatigue" and newer cars have beepers in them that go off if you've been driving for more than 2 hours.. it's pretty neat

3.  One of the popular celebrity gossip magazines here is called 'New Idea'.. whoever came up with that must have thought they were really clever

4.  Things are dated dd/mm/yyyy here and people have trouble understanding American licenses

5.  There are weird spellings for a lot of things.. for example, 'tire' is spelled 'tyre'