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?
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