From the outback to the rainforest

When last I left off, I had just arrived back in Alice Springs on an evening bus through the very dark outback. My original plans were to stay in Alice Springs until the 28th, when I would fly to Cairns to stay my next volunteering session. However, after just one night in Alice Springs I knew that I had to change those plans because more time in Alice Springs would be quite boring. Alice is not considered a safe place to be walking around at night. Whether this is actually the truth or it is just the Australian attitudes toward the Aboriginee population, I am not sure. But I did witness and loud, not very friendly sounding gathering around a bonfire in a park on my first night there while walking home from dinner with one other girl. We decided that was not something we'd want to encounter again... therefore I moved my flight to Cairns to the 23rd and upon my return to Alice I moved to a hostel (called Annie's Place) that had food service and a bar inside of it to avoid the need to leave at night. An added bonus was that a few of my fellow volunteers would also be staying there.

The first day back was spent enjoying my freedom from the buffel grass. I splurged on an $8.80 lunch at a deli with Tina. I did laundry and even dried my clothes (there was no drier at the volunteer house) although some things still did not dry completely and so I set myself up with a bunkbed laundry line.



The first night in this hostel Martijn and I had a whole 6-bed room to ourselves. The room even had a tv (with only one channel) and it's own bathroom (without a working light), but it was excellent! The second day we were joined by 2 stinky english guys just back from camping in the outback, another guy who I don't know where he was from, and Regina, one of the other volunteers, who had taken a longer route back to Alice via Kings Canyon.

Always on the lookout for free and cheap activities, Tina, Martijn and I signed up for a free half-hour trip to feed the rock wallabees at the edge of the MacDonnell Range. We hopped on a bus reminiscent of spring break 2002, I shook off of the awkward feeling that I am damn-old and headed off to feed wallabees right out of my hands!

That night we all ordered the $5 meal at the hostel, camel lasagna. The idea if eating camel was frightening but the meal was actually quite good. We followed up the camel with 3 pitchers of different australian beers, an Alice Spring brew, Tooheys and Southwark. And we followed that with some Olympics where we saw the curly haired Australian guy win the gold in pole vaulting.

The next day we went our separate ways. Although I left my almost empty suitcase with Tina to take with her back to Melbourne in October, where I'll pick it up from her in December. The only other option was to leave it in Alice Springs because I'd determined I could not do this backpacker thing properly with both a backpack and a suitcase. Such a relief to have less stuff, although I now have nothing on wheels which means I have to be able to lift all of my stuff at once--and put one foot in front of the other. I estimate that this is about 25-30 kilos--or 50-60 pounds--or more than half my own weight.

I flew to Alice Springs on Saturday the 23rd and arrived in Cairns at 8:30 pm. finally returning to warm weather. My hostel for that night immediately screamed out, "everyone here just graduated high school!" Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but they were young. When I asked two of my roommates, a scottish girl and a german girl, how long they had been in Cairns and what they had been doing, they responded that they had been there for 2 months and they had been doing nothing. Uhh, great. But I need out. Add to that scenario the need for earplugs to drown out the techno coming from the bar next door and I knew I couldn't stay in this place that made me feel ancient for more than the night. I planned to find a new hostel, stay a few nights while I tried to figure out how I wanted to get to Cape Tribulation (most northern point on the east coast of Australia that you can get to without 4 wheel drive).

Turns out I didn't need another hostel because the next morning I met 3 germans (Patrick, Lenny and Judith), rented a car with them for $45 a day, and left Cairns to camp for 4 nights on the beach and in the rainforest.

Judith had met Patrick and Lenny the night before and I met Patrick that morning at the reception desk of the new hostel I was about to check into when I overheard him asking about ways to get to Cape Trib. Turns out that Patrick, who I initially thought was American from his perfect english and his accent, was German but had done one year of high school in Texas (damn it, thought I was finally meeting my first American!), Lenny and Patrick were traveling together and had been friends for 14 years, and Judith had just finished doing a semester in Perth and was traveling until she had to get home to Germany for the next semester.

The whole trip only cost us $120 each. That includes car (a nissan station wagon from the 80s), food (pasta, pbj, and oranges), campgrounds (we could not fulfill Patricks dream to camp in the wild and had to pay for sites instead), and plenty of yarumba (cheap boxed wine). We only did activities that were free but we did manage to find several trails leading to awesome waterholes and beaches we shared only with a few other hikers and along the way spotted a cassawary, a croc, some crazy sort of turkey thing with a red head, a bird that looked like a velocerapter, a bug that hissed at us and a monster red and yellow spider.

We saw some really awesome beaches. Some had dead corals washed up on shore. There is some sort of sand crab that kicks up balls of sand from its hole and makes this patterns in the sand. The dot patterns are strikingly familiar to Aboriginee art.


Although we opted for the cheapest of campgrounds we did stop at some to check out prices that doubled as hostels and were the kind of place that you could totally stay for weeks... and people do. Dougies is a campground and caravan (Australian for hippie camper van) park that has at it's center an area that appears to be indoors but really is just a roof and a few walls here and there sections off a bar, a kitchen area for guest cooking, a laundry area, a dance floor, tables and pool table. And since the temperature is basically always perfect you never realize when you are going indoors or out.

Since Australia is such a dry country, campfires are never allowed. I missed having that smell but other than to make smores, there really wasn't any need for a fire. You certainly don't need the heat. It's really crazy how little difference in temperature there is here from day to night--maybe about 5-7 degrees.

I was very impressed with the english all 3 Germans spoke. Although Lenny and Judith needed occasional translation help from Patrick, the language barrier was a non-issue, thanks entirely to them. Although just like others I've met earlier in the journey, we discovered some words that exist in both english and german but have quite different meanings. Lenny got a kick out of my description that the sand was "mushy".

We also had a really interesting conversations about Germany's past and how it has changed the way things work today in Germany, how German kids are taught about the Holocaust and how American kids are taught about the Holocaust, how college works in both countries (semesters are Oct-Feb and April-July and its insanely cheap to go), about backpacking and why there are so many Germans and so few Americans doing it, about the US elections (people can not resist asking me about it and I am repeatedly shocked at how much these foreigners know about what is going on in US politics--and they all love to trash Bush), and the occasional teach-Jamie-German session.

Our journey went only as far as our ancient car would allow. Just beyond cape tribulation there is a sign that warns "4 wheel drive only beyond this point". There is not much of a choice anyway since a river intersects with the road here. This is the furthest north point on the east coast that a regular car can reach. Our journey only covered about 150 km up and 150 back so we had plenty of time for living cheaply and being lazy.

Exactly what I needed.



ABOVE: Big hissing bug outside of bottle shop (liquor store) in Port Douglas.


ABOVE: At campground number 3, Noah's Beach.


ABOVE: Crocodile hanging out on the beach on the opposite side of the river from the trail we were walking on.



ABOVE: Striped spider


ABOVE: 6 am campground number 4... Ellis Beach

Pictures

NOTE: I think I know what is wrong with the pictures. I will fix them soon.

2 weeks

Things I have learned after 2 weeks in Australia:

1. Australian money is made of plastic.

2. $5 camel lasagna is actually very tasty. I ate the whole thing.

3. If you ask a Korean how old they are an approriate response can be "where?" In Korea, you are 1 year old the day you are born and so when I asked Max who old she was, she said "In Australia I am 23, but in Korea I am 24, and 2 weeks ago I was 22."

4. Holland and the Netherlands are the same place. Holland is not part of the Netherlands, it IS the Netherlands, and at least one Dutch citizen has no idea why their country has two names.

5. Ghan is the name of the Australian train traveling between Darwin and Adelaide and also the Manderin word for "fuck".

6. One way to add an extra element of difficulty to the card game "bullshit", is to play with people of all different accents. Then, not only do you have to figure out who might be lying, you have to figure out what they are actually saying.
"two keens"
"is that queen or king?"
"keen."

"three ahce."
"ace or eight?"

you get the idea.

7. Australian animals are surprisingly trusting of humans.
--The butcher birds (for whom our buffel grass removal efforts doubled as a breakfast discovery service) would hang out as near as about 3 feet from us to snatch up skinks and legless lizards.
-- I fed wild rock wallabees... right out of my hand... like I had wallabee spit on my hand.
--That emu I saw in the liquor store parking lot(or "car park") last week was strutting around poking its head into circles of people, like he was just another one of us, hanging out, hoping someone might have a snack to share.
--The kangaroo we saw at Kata Tjuta allowed us with in about 6 feet of him before he backed away.
--But oddly, the least trusting animal I have encountered here, was a dog who wandered into our CVA living area and was so scared but yet so hungry that at first he kept about a 12 foot distance. Coaxing and food eventually brought him closer, but no one was ever able to get close enought to touch him.

8. They call it backpacking for a reason--you should only have a backpack. I decided that my suitcase was limiting my options so I threw out some stuff, gave away some other stuff, and left my mostly empty suitcase with Tina at the Alice Springs CVA office. She will pack up her things in it when she returns to Melbourne at the end of October and I'll get it from her when I get there in December. I owe her!

9. I am 149 centimeters tall.

10. In England and Australia, in order to be a doctor you only have to do 3 years of "uni" and 2 years of med school. That's a bit frightening.

11. Australian electrical outlets have little switches to turn each socket on or off.

12. It is possible to go 11 days without using one single paper towel or paper napkin. Sometimes gross, but possible.

14. Australia is an arid country as a whole but right now there is a drought which has put the Melbourne reservoirs at 40%. I assume that this is the reason that laundry is so expensive at $4 a load.

15. It takes a long time to remember to get into a vehicle on the other side.

16. I should have done this 3 years ago.

Back to semi-civilization

I am back from Uluru now and have returned to the semi-civilization of Alice Springs. I was apologize for the long delay in posts. Computers, internet and cell service were hard to comeby in the outback.

But I was still typing away on my tiny portable keyboard and phone documenting my activities for you whenever I could. I have just posted several entries from the last 10 days or so below.

Kangarros, wallabees, camels and dingos of mythical proportions

This post written on August 19, 2008.

There are so many dogs barking.

We arrived back from day 7 of 9 days of buffel grass removal at 3:30 and now I am sitting outside in the 4:30 sun (which out here presents the possibility of burn) in one of very few locations where I get a small enough bit of service to send some emails. I am not moving. The volunteer accommidations here consist of 5 trailers surrounding a wooden deck area with these really awesome permanent tarp type things hung from metal poles to provide shade on the deck. There is a trailer that is a kitchen, one that is two bathrooms, and 3 that are split into two bedrooms with 2 sets of bunch beds each. The trailer complex is located inside a fenced-in area that serves as the equipment storage space for the Uluru/Katajula Parks department. Surrounding the storage area is an Aboriginal community. We have been told it is not a good idea to leave the fenced area, not because of the people we might encounter, but because of all the dogs. Apparently, (and I heard this first from an Irish backpacker in Alice Springs who is a veterinarian) there is a pretty large problem with dog populations getting out of control because the aboriginees don't neuter them and they let them run wherever. Good thing I know all about pack mentality from The Dog Whisperer. There are packs of dogs everywhere and at least once a half-hour someone in that pack must be challenging authority because you'll suddenly hear a commotion of what sounds like 15 dogs all barking together... and sadly there is usually one whining in a "please don't hurt me" voice.

Today is day 8 of 10 working. We worked through the weekend making Saturday, Sunday and Monday "light" days by only working two shifts. We spent the extra time doing various hikes at Uluru and Kata Tjuta. It was at Kata Tjuta that I encountered my first wild Kangaroo! Or it might have been a wallabee... we weren't sure. But either way, it hops and has a pocket... which makes it awesome in my book.

The sunsets and sunrises here are AMAZING. When you are standing so that you are facing the rock and the sun is setting behind you, it casts all different colors on the rock as it goes down. And since it is a desert you can see the horizon in all directions to see how the sky changes. On the way home from Kata Tjuta on Sunday we stopped to see the sunset. There was a full moon on this night rises from the opposite direction as the sun was setting. Because the moon was so low it was really big and really awesome. Pictures can't accurately capture this experience.








And once the sun is down, there are sooooo many stars. Not even out in the midwest did I see so many stars. When you look up it looks like it could be snowing. AND you can see the Milky Way... easily. Last night we went on a star tour. This meant we stood out in a field and this guy told us about what we were looking at. Apparently you can see more stars from the southern hemisphere than anywhere in the north because the difference in the amount of light pollution is just that extreme. The guy also had two big telescopes set up for us and we looked at the moon, Saturn and several stars that look like just one star to the naked eye but are actually many stars close together. The middle of our star tour was interrupted by a crazy noise that had I been alone would have sent me running. It sounded like a growl from a dingo of giant mythical proportions. Tina reassured me that I was probably a camel. And the next day we did discover that there indeed was a camel farm not to far away.

A camel. Ha.

Translations

This post was written on August 15, 2008.

Today is the third day of work at Uluru with Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA). I am part of a team of 8 people, including our 60-year-old english obsessive compulsive team leader (Martin), and the girl (Tina) that is to replace him starting the next session when he leaves--not for retirement, but for a 4 month holiday. Of the rest of us, I am the oldest--surprise surprise--but not by too much. The others are a between 21 and 23. They include 2 girls from Korea (Lily and Max), a girl (Regina) and a guy (Adami)from Tiawan , and a guy from Holland (Martijn).




Other than the two employees of CVA, I am the only native english speaker. Everyone else does speak english--but at varying degrees. The guy from Holland (Martijn) and the girl from Tiawan (Regina)can speak it conversationally--although we have discovered some humorous translations and strange uses of words. The other 3 understand directions and at least part of most conversations but usually take a bit longer to find their words.

But what is really interesting is watching all these native Koreans, Dutch and Tiawanese speak to each other in their own version of english. And to make it even more complicated for them, each of the 3 native english speakers that they are surrounded by here use different accents (English, Australian and American) and different phrases and slang that even the 3 of us have had to ask each other for clarification.

Last night, the English team leader asked the Dutch guy "How have you found the work?" And the Dutch guy proceeded to give him a description of how he found CVA online and thought it would be a great way to visit Uluru.

I have helped out with the correct pronunciations of words like "automatically", "canoe", "aluminum"(which varies from one english speaking country to another anyway), and "shithead".

We were discussing possible card games to play last night and one of the Korean girls suggested a game called "One card". She asked if we knew it and after a few minutes of contemplation it occurred to me that the game she was describing was "Uno"-- which is the spanish word for "one". Once we cleared that up, the Tiawanese guy joined us and the Korean girl asked him if he knew how to play "Uno --which of course he did not know what we were talking about because why would a Tiawanese guy know the spanish word used in english to describe a game that Tiawanese has its own word for.... whew.

And speaking of spanish, we had Tacos for dinner last night. One of the Korean girls and I were on cooking duty -- somehow I was automatically considered to be the taco expert here -- perhaps because I come from the same Hemisphere as Mexico? Anyway, the Dutch guy had never had or even heard of tacos before, and most of the Asian kids had only had them once or twice and had never had the hard shells like we were eating!

And the other morning the Tiawanese girl didn't know what oatmeal was and asked me how you make it -- if you haven't been around me at breakfast in the last year or so, you should know that I am an oatmeal connoisseur.

Anyway, as a result of all this crazy translation business I am finding that I am simplifying the way that I speak. I am avoiding big words and describing things in ways that are very simplistic. Sometimes I even find that I skip words and talk in broken english like they do! It's crazy how quickly people's speach patterns influence you when you speak 24 hours a day with them. I also am finding that jokes and sarcasm don't always translate. I am sharing a room with the Australian girl, which is nice because at the end of the day we can laugh over the miscommunications and mistranslations -- even those that occur between her language and mine.

A buffel grass invasion

This post written on August 14, 2008.

A fly committed suicide in my oatmeal this morning. Not a good way to start the day for either of us. Unfortunately for me, once I fished him out, there were raisins in the oatmeal which made eating it a stressful task. Why not throw it out and eat something else you ask? That's just not an option around here... and anyway there are so many flies in the kitchen another one would surely take the opportunity to end it's life in the new bowl.

I suppose I should explain what it is I am doing out here at Uluru... or for some of you what Uluru even is!

Uluru is also known as Ayers Rock. It is the big red rock in the middle of the desert that you often see on books or websites about Australia. After the Great Barrier Reef this is probably Australia's most well known natural attraction... well beside all those crazy poisonous snakes and spiders and seashells.




Uluru is the Aboriginal name for Ayers Rock. In 1985 ownership of the land surrounding the rock was returned to the Aboriginal community. Management of the park is now shared by 4 white officals from the park and state, and 8 Aboriginal committe members (providing the Aboriginal community the ability to veto any proposal without explanation). With all of these changes, the name of the site has also been changed back to the original "Uluru".

It has been difficult for me to find scientific explanations for what this big ass rock is doing out here in the middle of the desert. There is no traditional welcome center like most parks in the US have with scientific explanations for what you are seeing. There is however, a cultural center, that was apparently only built in 1996, that provides information on the customs of the Aboriginal people, their stories and beliefs about the rock, etc. There is no scientific information because they have requested that there not be. I did find one page in a guidebook with the preface at the top "Please remember that this is a western point of view of how Uluru and Kata Tjuta formed. Anangu have a different belief accoiunt to Tjukurpa". You would think with a preface like this, the information to follow would be something along the lines of evolution vs creatiomism type conflict, and yet all it said is that the rock is made of a sedimentary sandstone rock, that both Uluru and Kata Tjuta exten
d for 5-6 km below the surface, that they have a red color because of weathering similiar to rusting on the iron mineral in the rock and that these two rocks were harder than other rocks that at one time surrounded them and have now eroded away. Strange to think that this could be a controversial idea.

So now that you know what Uluru is, what the hell would I be doing out here for 2 weeks. First you should know that other than this small Aboriginal community we are strangely living inside of, there are NO people out here for hundreds of kilometers.(Get used to me speaking in metric terms. I will convert over entirely as soon as I learn how to accurately express my height in centimeters). For 10 days I will be part of a volunteer team charged with the removal of invasive buffel grass. Buffel grass is a native grass of Africa that was originally brought to Australia to feed the invasive cattle that were brought to Australia from Europe to feed the invasive Europeans. Incase you do not know what I mean by "invasive", the term refers to a species of plant or animal that is not native to that part of the world -- usually it is a species that was transported somewhere by humans within the last 300 hundred years.

Having recently finished "The World Without Us" (Alan Weisman), I now look upon this idea of describing any life form as "invasive" as really more of a short-sited concept. If you look at life on a longer time scale, every species was at sometime "invasive".... or new to that environment. That's how evolution works. However, that is a conversation for another day.

Today, is simply about learning why it is that the buffel grass is considered invasive, what effect it is having on the environment of the Australian outback (at least as it has existed for the last several thousand years), what it is that is being done to reverse these changes, and why. And I have plenty of time to contemplate these things, as I swing my maddock repeatedly at the roots of the enemy plant. Apparently buffel grass, which is highly suitable for desert environments, has spread outside of the cattle pastures and now grows on 57 percent of the land mass of Australia. By taking up so much space it leaves less space for the native species, which are disappearing quickly. When the native species disappear,the small animals and insects that eat it disappear, and when the small animals and insects that are eaten by larger animals, like dingos and guannos, disappear so do the dingos and guannos.

 

Essentially that is the reason why we are doing what we are doing. We do 3 shifts a day starting at 7 am and ending at 3 pm. It is about 40 degrees when we start and about 75 degrees when we finish. We identify the grass, hack it out of the ground with its roots, bag it up and move the bags to the street. All the while under the shadow of the rock, the curious eye of the tourists, a film of red dust and a sun that even in the middle of winter requires application of SPF 50 every hour or so.


And for those of you concerned about the crazy Australian spiders, insects and snakes that I might be uncovering under these plants; I have yet to find a single bug-like or snake-like creature while traipsing about in the bush; unless of course you count the bee that stung me yesterday, and the fly that died in my oatmeal this morning.

When Adami took this photo he said, "I need to take picture. You look like working hard volunteer."

Camels and emus

I just saw a herd of wild camels on the side of the road. Wild camels!

I am currently traveling the 450 km (no idea how that translates to miles yet) from Alice Springs to Uluru. I am on a bus with people who are about to begin a 3 day camping tour of Uluru and Kings Canyon. I am just getting a ride to Yulara, the town at the base of Uluru where I will do my first volunteering session. There are not a lot of ways to get out there and when my initial plan fell through, it took about 8 phone calls to find a company willing to make a stop there and who had a space for me on the right day.

In case you don't know why I am headed to this place called Uluru, let me fill you in. Uluru is the Aboriginal name for what was known for the last hundred years or so as Ayer's Rock.  
This is the big red rock in the middle of the outback that after a picture of a kangaroo would probalby be the more commonly used image to represent Australia. I will be doing my first volunteering session out at Uluru. I have been told I need to meet someone named Martin at the post office in Yulara (the teeny tiny town at the base of the rock) at 1:30 on August 12. That is all I know. So this morning I left my suitcase at the hostel for 2 weeks and am going out with just my 2 backpacks. Which reminds me--I left my sleeping bag on the plane yesterday like a jerk. But I talked to the desk about it and turns out that people forget sleeping bags there all the time so they gave me one--which happens to be much newer and packs up smaller than mine anyway--I washed it and it is now mine.

On this bus there are about 20 people. However, they are the most geographically diverse 20 people I have ever shared a bus with. The countries represented included, US (me only) Canada, UK, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Holland, and Australia.

I am getting annoyed that I keep meeting people that I like and I have to leave them less than 24 hours later! I exchanged numbers yesterday with a girl from the UK who has the same working holiday visa that I do and is staying in Sydney. She was out in Alice Springs because her 3 month job just ended and so she was doing some traveling before returning to Sydney to look for another short-term job. This girl, Jess, was one of my six roommates last night. All 7 of us were from different countries. We were from the US, England, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Australia, and Poland. And all of us were female and ALL were traveling alone.

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Dude, now I just had a close encounter with an emu.

To the outback!

This post written August 11, 2008 but internet was unavailable until now.

I am flying again -- on my way to Alice Springs.

Melbourne was excellent and I'm happy that it is where I will be returning to later when it is time to make some money.

Since the weather is so mild everything about the setup of melbourne seems to be about taking advantage of the outdoors. Almost every restaurant has an outdoor area--even starbucks and Burger King (which is called Hungry Jack's here) have tables on the sidewalks.

A little FYI to Plaid... I spotted the PwC building within about 10 minutes of leaving the airport! They use the regular logo longways on the side of the building and the little icon on another side of the buildling. And it is impossible to miss.

Its a good thing I gave myself 3 days in Melbourne before heading to the outback, because it took that long to get a bank account, cell phone service, extra straps for my backpack, find new transport to uluru, unpack all my stuff and debate if I needed to ditch some wieght and then just pack it all back up again etc.... It wouldn't seem to be the case but when you decide you need to buy something its not just as easy as googling to see where the closest chain store that you are already familiar with is located... you have to first find out the name of a store that would even sell that type of thing... and then google it to find it's location.

I checked out a few banks for my best checking account options and ended up with NAB (National Australian Bank). Obviously they have to mail you the check card and when you are a homeless nomad like me, providing an address is not so easy. So I told the woman I would be back with an address that afternoon. Of course it was Friday, the bank was closed all day Saturday and Sunday and I was leaving at 8am Monday so there was a clock to compete with as well. My plan was to call the volunteer office in Alice Springs to ask if they would accept mail for me. However, this is not so simple either when you don't yet have cell service or a landline available to you. The hostel could sell me a calling card for $10 to use with the phones in the building but this was more than I needed for this call. So I found a $5 one at 711 (they are on about every street corner) and called from a pay phone. The guy assured me the mail could be sent there, but still I'm not putting any money in the account until I have my card and pin.

Next I was off to get service for my phone. At the Telstra store the dude with the clipboard directed me to a salesman from Kentucky on the premise that "he speaks your language." I ended up with a prepaid plan that allows me to make affordable calls within Australia as long as I continue not to have any friends who I might want to talk to for any more than 5 minutes. It is great for my current purposes of making reservations and calling bus companies to come back to get me after I am late and miss my 6:30 am pick-up.

The hostel I was at in Melbourne was called Greenhouse Backpackers. It was like a flashback to college except that there are no windows in the rooms and sometimes your roommate might be a senior citizen and that there is no class so some people stay up drinking till 7 am and sleep all day... oh wait that IS like college.

The first night I paid a little extra for my own room incase of severe jetlag.. It was a little freaky being alone in this room with no windows, no tv or radio to break the silence, and lights that go off automatically after an hour (to save energy) occassionally leaving you stranded in the pitch black. But after all my banking and cell phoning excursions, (not to mention traveling half way around the globe in one 36 hour mega day) I was pooped. So at 6:15 I full-out went to bed and slept until 5am -- with periodic time checks on my phone since with no windows I had no way of knowing if morning had arrived.

On the second day I moved into a 6 person bunk where my roommates were a girl who slept for 22 hours and two asian girls who I don't believe spoke any english. At least if they did, they didn't give in to letting me know while they hovered over me watching me struggle with a lock and wispering to each other in an unknown language. Once I finally got the lock open, my explaination as to what the cause of the problem had been, was met only with half smiles and a little laugh.

On the third day the sleeping girl got kicked out of the hostel (perhaps for sleeping and not paying) and the mystery asian girls checked out. My new roommates were an older woman from New South Wales, a girl from Tiawan and 3 English med students who were spending a few weeks traveling in Australia before going to New Zealand where two of them would be working in a hospital for 2 months. Helen, Laura and Anna--who were excited to get a mention here in my blog--allowed me to join them for dinner in chinatown and a drink at an irish pub. Such a relief to have a meal with people, and they just happen to be interesting and fun people too!

Thanks girls! I had a great time and I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip!

I have now arrived in Alice Springs... stay tuned.

AFL

I went with people from the hostel to an AFL game last night. AFL stands for Australian Football League or more commonly referred to as Aussie Rules Football. The sport was first played in Melbourne in the 1890s. For awhile the only teams were in Victoria (the state that Melbouren is in) but it is now a national league and the game has spread to some parts of europe. It the most popular sport in Melbourne and most of Australia (Rugby is still more popular in Queensland and Sydney).

The game is a crazy combination of soccer, rugby, american football and maybe even a touch of basketball. The ball is oblong but not pointy on the ends like American footballs, the field is round (it is literally a cricket field since when the game was being invented those were the fields that were available in existing stadiums) there are goal posts on either end of field but without the horizontal bar. Players can throw, kick or carry the ball, but if they are carrying, the ball must touch the ground once every 10 steps which means they either bounce it (not easy with a ball that is not round) or they literally bend down and touch it to the ground. Tackling and even leaping up and stepping on another players' back or shoulders to get leverage are common... as well as fighting. AND they don't wear any equipment. No helmets, no pads, not even shin guards.

I didn't understand all the rules but here is a website that explains them if you'd like to find out more. http://www.afl.com.au/FanZone/Rules/tabid/7892/Default.aspx

I took some pictures which I will add here soon

The refs, who are dressed in yellow are acually responsible no only for making calls but for throwing the ball in (backwards over the head) from the sidelines when it goes out. There are also two people in flourescent yellow on the field. Each team is allowed one message runner --- meaning if the coach wants to tell a player something he sends out one of these flourescent guys to sprint across this gigantic field to talk to the player. As soon as he gets back again another messanger is dispersed. At other points in the game (i think after a goal is scored) dudes in red jackets run (and by run I mean sprint) onto the field with waterbottles. This is one game where everyone involved has to be in good shape!

I ate a meatpie. Apparently meatpie at a AFL or cricket game is like hotdogs at a baseball game. And they call the french fries "crisps" and ketchup "sauce".

At the end of the game they play the winning team's song and people sing. The song for the team that won sounded like it would have been a school song for a British boarding school... so wierd to end such a violent game with a song so... delicate. Had the other team won, their song was "When the Saints Go Marching In."

Flying and flying and flying

My watch says 130 am.. The clock on the wall says 10:30pm. I am at LAX. I still have 15 hours of flying ahead of me. I am tired.

However, I do have to say that Quantas is awesome. My New York to LA flight was booked through Quantas but was run out of the American Airlines terminal. I don't know what the plane was labeled on the outside but on the inside it was 100% Quantas. It was almost like I stepped into a little flying piece of Australia right at JFK. The flight attendants all had Australian accents, the little individual tv screens with a large selection of free ondemand movies, tv shows, music and even video games all included a number of Australian produced options, AND the safety instructions (which by the way, were by-far the best and bluntest I have ever seen) referred to our mode of transportation as an "aeroplane". Adios New York.

I left New York at 7pm Wednesday (New York time) and will arrive in Melbourne at 7 am Friday (Melbourne time). I'm just skipping Thursday this week.

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According to the watch that is still set to EST it is 9:10 am... but I look out the window of the "aeroplane" and it is pitch black dark out. It's now been dark for almost 12 hours for me. And it will continue to be dark for at least another 5 or 6. Talk about a long night!

Speaking of looking out the window and night time... there are an enormous amount of stars visible out here in the middle of the pacific ocean. And since you can't see ocean below or anything but the stars for that matter, it feels like just maybe if I turn on my overactive imagination I could be flying around on a really crowded space shuttle in space.

I am still a big fan of Quantas but I happen to be in a seat where the little tv is not working. It is ironic that after so many months of being so busy preparing and packing and moving and buying and selling, that I am finally trapped for 14 hours in front of a device intended for movie and tv watching and it doesn't work. Oh well. I got one movie in on the first flight.

I am sitting next to an Australian couple who are probably in their early 60s. They are returning from a 2 month trip to the US and Canada. It was their first visit to North America. They mentioned having stopped in Toronto, New York, DC, the Florida Keys, Kennedy Space Center (this was their favorite), San Fransisco, San Diego, LA... That is a lot to do in 2 months. And its funny how in the US, we would think all those places are so far away from one another that they don't seem to fit together in one vacation. But they are probably thinking the same about my plans to traverse all over their continent. Because when you travel so far and the likelihood of coming back is low, you want to see as much as possible.

We get 2 full meals on this flight (which means I ate a 2nd dinner at what was to me 4am and will be eating breakfast when my EST set watch will say about 3 pm. To hold us over for 9 or 10 hours between these meals they have given us all a bag with several snacks and a bottle of water... i guess so that they don't have to keep pushing the cart down the isle and waking up all the sleeping passengers. Inside this bag is a little package of what I will describe as a dried fruit mix. There are raisins and dried bananas and several other unidentifiable chunks of orange and yellow with sugar on them. The Australian man next to me was eating these and held one out and said to me "It's a wichigrub." To which I answered, "huh?" He said, "The aborigines eat them. They pick them out of logs. I don't know what you call them in America but like a little grub." Sooo I am hoping he means his dried fruit was shaped like this "wichigrub". I have since inspected my little bag and have come to the conclusion that the fruit or candy (or grubs) that are inside are not intended to be shaped like any animal or bugs like an animal cracker or fruit snack might be so I am thoroughly confused as to what this conversation was all about. In any case, I am going to opt for the applesauce oatmeal cookies over this "wichigrub" snack.

By the end of flight my new friends had invited me to come visit them and the penguins that live near them on Philip Island -- about 2 hours southeast of Melbourne. Who knew there were penguins here!