Do you have the kitchen sink in there?

There is a sign along the side of the highway as you enter Brisbane (pronounced briz bin) that says "Brisbane - Australia's most livable city." Who was in charge of writing taglines that day? Debbie Downer?

For the last 4 weekends I have arrived in Brisbane on Friday or Saturday and left on Monday. Brisbane is the largest city outside of Melbourne that I have been to in Australia so far. Cairns was a "city" but the downtown (or CBD as they call it) is small and exists pretty much only for tourists. And everything outside of Cairns CBD is really just a large suburb. So arriving in Brisbane for the first time on Saturday October 4, I was greeted with familiar city sounds and sites for the first time in over 2 months. Brisbane is still pretty small as cities go but it has experienced a great deal of growth over the last 10-15 years.

When I arrived in Brisbane on the 4th I was traveling with Jess and Alex, the 22 year old English girls that I originally met in 1770 and had traveled to Fraser Island with. After parting ways with the rest of our Fraser Island group, Jess, Alex and I went to Noosa for one night and then continued on to the Australia Zoo near Gimpy (yes, there is a town called Gimpy). We brought all our luggage with us to the zoo and locked it up in lockers for the day.

Australia Zoo, is the "Home of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter." This is where many of Irwin's crocs live as well as plenty of animals with pockets and spikes, and venom, and crazy wacko names. There were of course plenty of kangaroos, wallabies, koalas and lizards. There were cassowaries and dingoes, emus and wombats, tasmanian devils and every one of the 10 most poisonous snakes. There were non native species like camels, otters, elephants and american alligators (probably just for the sake of comparison to the ginormous salties). We went to see the croc show at the Crocoseum where in addition to hand feeding the crocodiles chunks of meet, they also released all kinds of colorful and huge tropical Australian birds. There is no roof on the Crocoseum so the birds really could have just flown away. But they circled in and out and around and all came back to their trainers. I used the $41 from the 50/50 the New York Caresers held on behalf of my trip went to pay for my ticket to visit the home of these crazy marsupials. Thanks guys! I heart animals with pockets!




I didn't technically need to be in Brisbane for another week but I decided that it would be more fun to go to the zoo with Jess and Alex and spend the weekend with them in the city than to venture on my own again. Plus, the Canadian and English guys from our Fraser Island trip were living in Brisbane for another 2 weeks and we'd made plans to go out with them on Sunday. Turns out we were super tired by the time we arrived on Saturday and just spent the evening uploading pictures and checking email. The boys had been at a music festival for the day and when they called around 10 to see if we would want to come out, we sillily passed on the offer to save our energy for the following day. What we should have foreseen was that the boys would been in worse shape on Sunday and would therefore back out on those plans. Boys! But the 3 of us made it out to the Normanby Hotel (an old hotel turned into a bar) anyway and had a good time.

I parted ways with Jess and Alex on Monday morning. They were continuing further south and I headed back north a bit to a town called Mooloolaba (pronounced MOO lu la ba). Since I was backtracking I couldn't use my Cairns to Sydney Greyhound pass or I would run out of kilometers about 100k short of Sydney and they'd have to chuck me off the bus into the bush.

So instead I took regular Brisbane area public transportation. This involved taking the train to a bus. Brisbane's transportation system is pretty good. And it's very new, easy to use, clean and not crowded. As I boarded the bus to the hostel with all my gear, a woman who I believe was in her late 70s asked me, "do you have the kitchen sink in there?" I chatted with this woman for the bus ride and it turned out that she was born in England but had been living in Oz since she was about 10. She has some grandchildren who are now back living in England (Who knows why!) To keep in touch with them she has a small device about the size of my fold up keyboard when it is open (like 10 inches by 4 inches) and she can type out emails and send them via cell service... just like me. I showed her my phone and keyboard. Funny that the only person I've encountered in my travels who is able to send emails remotely like myself is a woman in her 70s. Love it.

Mooloolaba is a bit off the normal backpacker track. There is only one hostel and many of the people there were in town to find work as strawberry pickers. They get picked up at like 6:30 am and pick until about noon, but after that it is too hot so they send everyone home. They get paid by the amount that they pick and average is about $50 in a 5 hour day. For those who are thinking that this is strange that travelers are working as strawberry pickers, here is the deal. Australia does not directly border any country... especially any developing country with people who are willing to do manual labor for very little pay. Therefore, there is a constant shortage of people to work in agriculture jobs. The solution is that jobs that in America would frequently be filled by Mexicans and Central Americans, in Australia are filled by European, Asian and American travelers in their 20s. These people are often college educated and come from middle class backgrounds but are desperate for some quick cash without commitment in order to fund their journeys. You must have a working holiday visa in order to do this work (that is the visa I have) but other than that you can usually show up in Mooloolaba, or Bundaberg or Bowen or any of the many other base locations for agri work and make arrangements to start picking capsicums, or mangos, or pineapples, within a day or so and quit whenever the trauma of the heat, the thorns and the repetition conquers your psyche. As an added incentive, any traveler who does 3 months of agricultural work can get an extension on their visa to stay for a 2nd year.

I stayed in Mooloolaba from Monday through Thursday nights. It was a pretty quiet week. I didn't make much of an effort to make friends because I was really hoping for some time to myself to read on the beach and wander around and keep things inexpensive. However I did have one adventure that week -- in the mall. On Thursday it was cloudy and cool so I decided to go to the mall so that I could see a movie, buy a new shirt or two (clothes get worn out quickly when you wear the same things several times a week), and find a new book to read.

Well it turns out that in Australia I look like a criminal. I was taking my sweet time in a H&M type store called Supre. I was debating a lot because when you have to carry everything you own on your back, and you aren't earning any money, you don't want to make any rash purchasing decisions. Anyway, the store employees didn't seem to think that my slow method of shopping was as innocent as I did, and they suspected me of shopping lifting. They told mall security that they thought I might have put clothes on under my clothes in the dressing room. Fair enough, considering my speed and the number of times I went in there... but if they had used their brains it would have only taken one glance at me to realize the absurdity of this since I was wearing a WHITE TANK TOP... the kind where the only thing I could hide behind it would be a neutral colored bra. Or maybe a pair of stockings. And since this store didn't carry either of those items, there wasn't anything I could have gotten in there that wouldn't be just as obvious as writing thief on my face. But even so, the mall security guy took me to his little booth and made me empty out my bags. Amongst my wallet and cell phone and sunglasses was my white sweatshirt, which thankfully has permanent dirt stains on the sleeves, my plastic box with my sandwich for lunch and my water bottle. Maybe these items weren't helping my case since they made it look like I was a bum in need of a day of shoplifting. But after pointing out the white-tank-top aspect of the ridiculousness of this scenario to Mr. Mall Security Guard, he agreed that I was just a traveler with whole lot of time on my hands and sent me on my way strip-search free.

And that was the end of my time in Mooloolaba.

Leaving Australia zoo.


Can someone tell me what this sign means?

Everybody eats.

I just ate a cup of fruit pulp. Sounds pretty gross but it is really just frozen pieces of fruit put into this machine that churns it up real fast and pumps it out looking like icecream. It was quite good but some hot fudge, or even Nutella would have made it better.

I bet you don't even know what Nutella is. It is a brand name for hazelnut spread...like peanut butter but made from hazelnuts instead of peanuts. It is dark brown and so it looks like chocolate and also manages to taste like chocolate. It is as common around here as a topping for toast as butter. Another common toast topper is vegemite. Don't know about that one either? In england it is known as marmite. Oh wait, you wouldn't know it by that name either. Vegemite is a vegetable extract turned into a paste. It looks the same as hazelnut spread but tastes VERY different. I have not actually tried vegemite out here since I had a lovely introduction to it during the New York Cares Staff Day blind fold taste test in July 2007 which was rigged to favor the english staff members (How can you guess a food you've never tasted or even heard of, escpecially while gagging? Haha, just kidding, Mel!)


Anyway, it seems people either hate or love vegemite. But enough people despise it that the crew of Spank Me used it as a punishment for breaking the rules of the boat. Any plastic bags, papers, beer cans, cigarettes, clothing, etc blows or slides overboard, becoming a death trap for turtles and dolphins and you receive a vegemite fine -- a spoonful of vegemite to be eaten by itself. Stand on the stairs and block traffic -- vegemite fine. Put on Jack Johnson or U2-- vegemite fine. Knock over the skipper's coffee -- vegemite fine. Wave to your friends while snorkeling using the universal distress signal -- vegemite fine and a very angry wet crew. Anyway, those few that do enjoy the vegemite claim it is best on toast with butter. I've also seen it with eaten with butter AND melted cheese.

Speaking of butter or margarine, it has recently come to my attention that the whole world puts margarine on their sandwiches except for maybe me. Am I crazy? No one in NJ does this, right? NY? The whole east coast? Have I forgotten? The aussies do it, the europeans (all kinds) do it, even the canadians do it. If you purchase a sandwich it will have butter. I don't get it. Aren't there enough other flavors on your sandwich that you don't need butter too? On the last day of our fraser island trip we had no more margarine left. I said, "No more butter, now you all have to eat your sandwiches like americans!"

The grocery stores here are like scaled down versions of our. Makes you realize really how much excess we have. In Australia you can find anything you might want. You just might not find it in every single store, or in 17 different varieties. Unless we are talking about kitkats... they have tons of different kinds of kitkats. There is a cookies and cream kitkat that is amazing. Cookies are called biscuits, unless they are chocolate chip, in which case they are cookies. There is a "biscuit" here called a Tim Tam. It is sort of a square chocolate covered waffer with an oreo like cream on the inside. Other than Tim Tams I have been too impressed with the cookie selection. There are a lot of plain type cookies that are type people like to dip in tea. They do "tea" here, like england.

I still can't believe how many people have watched me make a sandwich and put jelly on top of my peanutbutter and say, "Peanut butter AND jam!? That's weird." I had no idea PBJ was really so american. I mean I knew it was a quintessental American food but I would have thought the idea would be so simple that it would easily spread. It's even more of a shocker to see how many people think that the combination is gross. I mean I'm sure they have sung about "peanutbutter jelly time"...

The fries here are called chips and the chips are called crisps, unless the fries are the big fat kind, then they are called wedges or if they come from McDonalds then they are called fries. There is a sandwich at McDonalds right now that comes with avocado. I got a breakfast wrap with avocado. Are they adding avocado at home too or is this just because the avocados here are abundant and perfect? There is also a limited edition sandwich called the McAustralia. In case you can't make it out in the picture, the description says, "Traditional damper bun, 100% Aussie beef, premium bacon, juicy pineapple, and bbq sauce."

Oh but back to those chips fries crisps. They have meat flavored potato chips. I mean bbq flavored is one thing. But there are chicken crisps, and roast beef crisps and steak crisps. Apparently these are also common in Europe. Do we have this and I just not noticed? I was quite amused to discover this snack.


There is one ingenious item that has been a regular in my diet. They make small single serving cans of tuna in a flavored sauce. These are awesome for a traveler because it means you can make a sandwich out of just the loaf of bread and the can of tuna (both of which travel and store well) without needing an mayonnaise or anything else to flavor the sandwich. You can also make a salad and add a can of tomato basil tuna and you won't need to buy any salad dressing because the sauce with the tuna is enough for the whole salad. This is also crucial since you can buy a single serviing of salad dressing and since the remaining bottle would have to be refrigerated, which is not an option on long bus rides and days when your bag is locked up in a locker at the zoo.



-Bell peppers are called capsicums.
-Bagels are almost non existant.
-The closest thing to a tostito is a plain dorito.
-Pizzas only come in small sizes, ie personal pizzas or dominos type pizzas. I have yet to see a large slice of pizza.
-Peanut butter is not as good.
-Granola bars suck.
-Organic is hard to find. (I miss kashi)
-All the produce is perfect and delicious (maybe this is just compared to JC).
-Ground beef is called mince.
-Dishes referred to as curry are quite common and are not what I would think of as curry expect that they are spicy.
-The bloomin onion was invented by Outback and exists only at Outback.
-Ketchup is often called sauce.
-Salad dressing is often called sauce.
-Cheddar cheese is sometimes called tasty cheese and sometimes called cheddar cheese and i've yet to figure out the difference.
-People will put cheddar cheese on their spaghetti dishes.
-There is no "american" cheese.
-The english love their beans on toast and spaghetti on toast, and although that idea is quite foreign in the US, you can find it on menus in Australia... along with plenty of fish and chips.
-I haven't yet been able to find any black beans... just baked beans, red kidney beans, and chickpeas.
-Raisins are called sultanas.
-I think coronas taste different, but there is no reason why, since they are all bottled in Mexico.
-There is no hershey chocolate. But there are many varieties of Cadbury and kitkats, and anything made by mars.


- Burger King is Hungry Jacks.
- Pretzels are not easy to find.

I've given up taking the nutritional value of foods into account when making my purchases. I consider the price, I consider the protein to carbohydrate ratio in my meal, I consider the potential leftovers and if I can hold on to them until my next meal; but if I turn the package over, the nutritional information means nothing. This is because most items don't list calories, they list energy using kilajewels (kj) I believe. I have no scale on which to judge this measurement. And everything seems to have more fat than I am used to seeing on the package. At first I thought the unit was different for this as well but then I remember we also measure our fat and protein in grams. It probably always seems higher because there are not so many low fat and lite varieties for food here.

I have heard that Australia recently passed the US for the fattest nation. And yet people keep asking me"is everyone in America fat?" Dude, are you looking at me? If EVERYONE was fat, and I walked around looking like this, don't you think I'd be reduced to a pancake by now? And so I carefully explain that Australia actually now has a higher percentage and so if they walk around on the street in Australia they can assume to see a similar sort of ratio of fat to thin in America.

Speaking of pancakes... Australians love their pancakes. I even saw a pancakes stand in the food court at the mall in Maroochydor. But they seem to like them with things like lemon and peanut butter and jam on top. Not with syrup. Or maybe syrup is just to expensive to be included in a free backpacker pancake breakfast.

I probably average about $13 a day on food. Many hostels have free breakfast -- which is really just toast. But when it is available I always eat it. Some hostels also have a $5 meal each evening (one option only) available for about 1 hour. Common $5 meals would be barbeque (sausages, onions and potatos), pasta, pizza, chicken snitzel, or burritos. I have one square plastic box that I frequently carry around with a sandwich in it for lunch -- that is whenever I have access to ingredients for making a sandwich. However, my major weakness to keeping the food budget in check is icecream. Gelato, frozen yogurt, sundaes and even fruit pulp that looks like icecream is everywhere, and I just can't resist.

Sand in places you didn't know existed

Today is the 8 week anniversary of my arrival in Australia. It will be another 9 weeks until I arrive in Melbourne to settle for a bit.

In the last week I have been involved in several conversations about how all of us travelers are perhaps the luckiest people on earth. And how we don't understand why more people, specifically Americans, don't take advantage of life, youth, freedom and their two legs and get the hell out to here or there or anywhere.

The night I was leaving 1770, I was sitting outside, writing the previous post, at the best hostel I have been to yet (Cool Bananas) and I met Dan and Tim, from New Jersey! Eight hours, a few beers, and a dinner of bangers and mash later we were still sitting at the same table discussing our journey's -- where we'd been, why we decided to come to Australia, and how it all compares to our home state. We discovered that we have a mutual friend -- a guy I knew in college and they knew from their hometown. It was such a relief to speak to people who knew, amongst other things, what I meant when I used the acronym TCNJ. But they were getting on a 2am bus to Noosa at the end of those 8 hours and so it was time for another round of goodbyes.

I moved on to Rainbow Beach the next day with Jess and Alex (both from England), and Andrea (from Switzerland) who I'd met at Cool Bananas. We were all going to Rainbow Beach to travel out to Fraser Island, the largest sand island in the world. Fraser Island also has a very unique eco system in that it is virtually the only place that rainforest grows in sand. Minus a few paved parking areas inside fancy resorts, there are no paved roads on the island. The island is only accessible via ferry -- the kind that carries vehicles. Your vehicle must also be 4WD since you will travel the length of the island by driving on the beach. For a package price, a hostel called Dingos in Rainbow Beach arranges for rentals of 4x4s, sets you up in groups of about 10-11, provides tents and other camping equipment, purchases food for 3 days and 2 nights, and gives you a map and some tips. The tips include: how to drive on sand, how to avoid being one of the 300 vehicles that get swept away into the sea each year, how to finding places to camp, and how to avoiding getting eaten by dingos.

Jess, Alex, Andrea and I decided to stay together as a group and quick grabbed a group of 4 guys -- Tim and Josh from England, and Ford and Skylar from Canada -- to join us. We were later assigned 3 more girls; Yolanda from Holland, Anne from Denmark and Barbara from Switzerland. Amongst our group we had 2 nurses, a paramedic/firefighter, a mechanic, and even two lawyers. In the case of any emergency, we'd be covered.



4 trucks left from Dingos Tuesday morning with 10-11 people in each. I think my favorite part of the trip was just driving around in the truck on the sand "highway". Since it was high tide we had to take an inland path on the southern part of the island the first day. This was also made of sand but went through the jungle rather than along the beach.


The first afternoon we stopped at Lake Mackenzie -- a freshwater lake with water clear enough to see through to the bottom in many places. By 2:30 we headed out to drive an hour up the island to a shipwreck in the area where we'd been advised to look for camping. All 4 trucks met -- although our team -- the A team -- arrived first and choose the spot... all others followed. This was to be a theme for the trip. The A-team was pretty much always first, fastest, and most efficient.



Before the sun had set, 16 tents had been set up, trucks and tarps were in place to block the wind off the ocean, steaks and potato salad had been cooked and eaten, the beer and goon had been opened and our 43 person beach party had begun.

On day two, we took our time packing up camp because the tides would not allow us to drive until late morning. We boiled some eggs and introduced a few europeans to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while we waited. Next stop was Eli Creek, where you can hop in the shallow and again insanely clear water and float along with the current (perhaps practicing a crocodile immitation) out to the beach.

After Eli, we headed up to Indian Point, where we climbed a few rocks up to a place where you can see the ocean on two sides and can frequently spot sealife. I was able to see a sting ray, 2 dolphins and an eagle's nest. This spot was another one of the many places that I keep thinking, "this is so beautiful, nothing could top this." And then inevitably, a day or two later something does.





We traveled back south along the island to find a camping spot for the 2nd night and again it was the A team that did the scoping out and the choosing of the location. Before we settled on a spot we had to dig the truck out of a few sand drifts but we beat out the other teams anyway. One truck never found us that night and had to camp on their own. Too bad for them because the site, the food and the party was even more memorable... or I should say NOT so memorable... for some.




By day 3, our hygiene had deteriorated pretty badly. But since the tides again did not allow us to drive in the morning we walked our stinky behinds 2 km up the beach and 2 km inland to Lake Wongai. The shore of one side of the lake is a huge and very steep hill of sand -- which of course taunts anyone with testosterone to run down and dive into the water.

After our hour long walk back from the lake we sat down for a lunch of eat-any-random-leftover-you-can-find with a side of sand. Then we headed back for the ferry to Rainbow Beach.

It was another awesome time. I have been really lucky so far with my random groups on trips like this. The people can make or break the experience. Our group was so much fun that I have decided to continue to travel with Jess and Alex for a few more days. And we will meet up with the 4 boys in Brisbane on Sunday as well. They've all been in Australia for almost a year and so their visas are coming to an end. Skylar and Josh will be heading home, at least for a little while, and Ford and Tim will go to Southeast Asia for the next 4 months or so.

Its addicting this traveling thing. Especially when you can travel and then work just enough to fund more travel and then travel a bit more. I might be hooked.

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Video also available on my facebook page. Will load faster from there.

See more pictures at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35537&l=1fc93&id=802088251
AND
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35546&l=777c9&id=802088251