Melbourne

Melbourne is awesome. It is definitely the best city I have visited in Australia, there are heaps of things to do and it has a really good feel to it. It is the arts/cultural capital of the country, and it shows. There are so many different kinds of people there, and just walking down the street you can see skater kids, business people, hipsters, and everyone else of any race you can think of (I even met a guy from Sudan). Our visit also coincided with World Youth Day, which is this giant Catholic gathering of 'pilgrims' from all over the globe. The city they meet in this year is Sydney, so they were touring around the country beforehand I guess. You would see people walking down the street wearing flags from their respective countries or other paraphernalia. Our hostel was at full capacity with these people and other backpackers too. Anyways, the city was really neat, there are all these different sections to it, and I'm pretty sure I covered most all of it by walking around in a different direction each day. There were a ton of laneways and arcades that were cool to explore. One time I walked into an arcade and it popped out into this alley that was filled with cafes on each side with graffiti on the brick walls and a guy was playing the violin in a corner... I felt like I had landed in some sortof Harry Potter other universe, the place just felt so different from where I walked out of. I had a sortof double take, and had to just take a moment to look around. There is a ton of street art there, and I took very many photos of the graffiti that I found all around the city. There were a lot of stencils around Brunswick Street, and the rest were more elaborate creations of crazy images that I saw around Victoria street or just in random places. It doesn't seem to be minded that much, at least it seems that they don't try to cover it up constantly because it's everywhere.

We did quite a few things in the city. We went on a tour of the old Melbourne Gaol (Jail, its spelled differently for some reason). It was used until 1994, which seems pretty recent because it looks very ancient. It reminded me of Alcatraz. It is the jail where Ned Kelly, the famous Australian outlaw, was hanged after he was finally caught. The facility housed women as well, and even some of their kids if they were too young to be left by themselves. It seemed like a bad place to end up, but most jails are like that I would assume. We also went to an AFL game! (a.k.a. Australian Rules Football, or footy). We were really confused in the beginning as to what the hell was going on, but we figured it out mostly by the end. It was at the MCG, which is a really famous stadium. They play on a gigantic oval field, which was cool, different from what I'm used to with the rectangular playing fields for soccer or football or anything else. One of the most fun nights was when we went on the 'hidden bars of Melbourne' tour. These bars really were hidden. Most of them consisted of a door in a random alleyway that opened to stairs, and when you went up them you found these little bars with different crazy themes. The best one by far was the ice bar. It was awesome. Everything was made of ice (walls, statues, chairs, the cups...), and you get a snow jacket, gloves, and booties when you go inside. It's really cold in the place, so you don't stick around too long, but it was really neat to be there for awhile. They had really good drinks too, and for some reason messed up and gave me 2 drink cards instead of one, so I felt lucky. The other bars we went to were Seamstress (used to be a sweat shop? It had oriental style fabrics hanging all around), Cabinet (really good drink there - it was warm and lemony with honey and cloves in it, it was like alcoholic tea), Eurotrash, and a couple others. We were in a big group of other random people, and it was cool to hang out with them.

Our hostel was freakin amazing. Definitely the best hostel I have ever stayed in. It was super clean, all the rooms had only 4 people in them at most, some even had their own bathrooms, there were a lot of cool hangout areas and plasma TVs everywhere, and they had a huge bar and really nice kitchen facilities (free breakfast and pasta/rice too!). The people there were awesome as well, easy to make friends with and they all wanted to hang out and have a good time. It was a bit of a walk out to the rest of the city, but I didn't mind it, it was definitely worth it to stay at this place. OH and every day at lunch we had sushi. That was another awesome part of Melbourne, there are sushi stands on every street pretty much, and it's just about the cheapest food you can find, so perfect match for our trip. It's about $2 per roll (its just the rolled up sushi, they don't cut it up), so thats a good deal I'd say, you get a couple of those and you're set. I would definitely be buying that all the time back in Brisbane if I didn't have a meal plan. Anyways, this whole trip over my winter break was lots of good times, I really had fun traveling around with Shannon and exploring new places around the country. It was cold at times, but not as bad as I thought it would be, and we got to do a ton of awesome stuff, i give it two thumbs up! Woo!


Photos are: city during the day/night, hanging out in a park, Shannon and I at the ice bar, me wearing Ned Kelly's 'armor' that he had to not get bullet wounds, Shannon and I at the AFL game, and some of the graffiti around the city

Grampian Mountains and the Great Ocean Road

We left really early in the morning to start our three-day trip from Adelaide to Melbourne. We slept most of the morning on the bus until we got to the Grampians. The Grampians are a mountain range in Victoria, and they are some of the oldest mountains in the world. We hiked up to the top of one of the peaks and it was a really fun trip. It was not a very long hike, but at least half of it was climbing over boulders and going through tunnels that the rock formations had made, and that was a lot of fun navigating up the mountain. The view at the top was cool as well. After getting back to the bus, we drove past a farm where they breed white kangaroos. Our tour guide said that this project was just for the benefit of tourists, and that the animals really should not be bred, as they are albinos and have a lot of genetic problems associated with them. They are more susceptible to cancer and other diseases, and it's just a bad deal. It's possible that the one at the San Francisco zoo came from this place, our driver said they are shipped all over to different zoos. It was just sortof a weird place, right off the highway in the middle of nothing else. We saw tons of wild kangaroos along the side of the road just driving along too, literally hundreds of them at a time. I found out that a group of kangaroos is known as a 'mob'.

The next day we went on another hike to the Pinnacle, which was the top of another one of the Grampians. It was a bit cold and wet out, but was a sweet hike nontheless, and the view at the top was amazing. You could see for miles around and it was really beautiful. We saw a wallaby, and were told that echidnas live around the area too. I learned that a baby echidna is called a 'puggle', that's a pretty cool name. After we completed that hike, we started our trip along the Great Ocean Road. The road was originally built by ex-soldiers after WW1 that returned to Australia and could not find work, so the government gave them jobs building this road. It was very hard work and some of them even died in the process. It was originally named 'Government Road', but the name was eventually changed to the Great Ocean Road, and that is exactly what it is. The vista points along the road were amazing, really beautiful rock formations and the water is super blue. We saw the sunset over the formations known as the 12 Apostles, and it was really pretty. We had good weather this day, and it was nice that the sun was out for most of the time.

The third day we went along more of the Great Ocean Road and walked down along this beach that had a really neat cave we got to walk through. A ship, the Lock Ard, had crashed near this beach in the 1880s, and the two survivors of the wreck very luckily found their way to this cave and lived there for awhile until they figured out how to climb up the cliffs and find civilization. After that, drove to the Otway Fly, a rainforest in Victoria. It was a really neat walk, they set up these catwalks through the trees so you are walking pretty high up in the air. At one point, you can walk up the stairs of a tower to be right at the tree tops, it was a different perspective and was interesting to be looking down on so many plants. We didn't see very many animals there, but the plants and environment were really cool to see. We kept driving down the road and stopped at this camper van park where a ton of koalas hang out for some reason. They were all around, and we even got to see a mama with her baby on her back! It was really cute to say the least. Another interesting Australian animal fact I learned is that male koalas have a double headed penis, and that female koalas have 2 vaginas! Ridiculous! It reminded me of the girl in my freshman dorm that had 2 utereses (uteri?), but even more crazy. As you can tell our guide was full of information. We went by Bell's Beach on the outskirts of Melbourne on the way into the city, it's a really famous surf spot. It is the only beach that is dedicated as a sort of 'sanctuary' protected area for surfers. I thought that was pretty cool. It was rainy and cold out, but there were still guys in the water, and we watched them catch waves for a bit. We finished up our trip that night and got into Melbourne about 7 or 8PM.

We went with a group of about 16 people from all over on this trip (Germany, Denmark, China, Korea, Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Belgium to name a few), and it was a good mix. One woman from the Netherlands was a bit annoying and complained about a fair number of things. She found the bathrooms to be unacceptable everywhere we went. She had just gotten back from a tour through the outback, I was wondering what she did out there? Everyone else was just like, suck it up princess! The guy from Korea was really cool, he kept asking me what phrases like 'suck it up' meant. He had just finished his military duty in Korea and was on a working holiday visa hanging out in Australia for awhile. There was a mother and daughter together too (from China), and the mom was wearing the most unpractical shoes on the hikes we were going on. I was amazed she made it through most of them (had to stop at the rock climbing parts for the first one), because they were like semi dressy shoes with no backs. People are funny. The only bad part of the journey was that Shannon got attacked by some nasty spider and has a few hardcore bites on the right side of her body. They are pretty intense and we are hoping for them to heal up soon, it looks painful. Other than that, it was a good trip with many very awesome views.



Photos are: view from the top of the Grampians, hiking down slippery rocks on our second hike, the tower you could climb up to be above the treetops in the Otway Fly, rock formations on the Great Ocean Road (the one on the right used to be called 'the tits', but is now known as the 'salt and pepper shakers'), one of the koalas we saw along the Great Ocean Road, sunset over the 12 Apostles, and Shannon and I being oh so gangsta

Adelaide and Kangaroo Island

Winter break has begun, and I just started my two weeks of travelling. I flew out of Brisbane on a 7AM flight to Adelaide, was very lucky and got a very motivated friend to wake up at 5 and give me a ride there. I got into Adelaide and met up with my freshman year roommate Shannon a few hours later, it was really awesome to get to see someone from home. We mostly walked around just killing time that afternoon, and then went back to hang out with people at our hostel and discovered that it was a very strange place. It was a bit removed from the Adelaide CBD and a lot of people seemed to be mentally unstable that were staying there (or many were living there permanently - we saw people leaving in suits to go to work). The woman that checked me in that morning seemed normal at the time, but later revealed herself to be a joint smoking, mural painting, rambling woman that was supposedly needing to be on some sort of mood medication but decided she was not going to take it. We were all sitting outside on the patio of this place, and she announced to the whole group of hostel people that she was off her period. It was funny, yet awkward. Another guy kept nervously pacing throughout the whole place, and would occasionally come outside and say something like, "What a nice little piggy!" and then go back in the hostel. He asked for a cigarette once, and when nobody had one, he freaked out. One girl told me he was on heroin or something. Some other people there were a guy from northern Ireland who was impossible to understand that had impregnated a black girl that was also living there (I guess they were having the kid too, she was 6 months pregnant. I really hope they move out of that place, I can't imagine a kid having to grow up there, it would be a messed up childhood for sure), a kid from New Zealand that looked a lot like the Irish guy and tried to tell people they were brothers, and a middle aged Asian guy that came outside to smoke every 15 minutes and filled all the bookshelfs with manga books (like a lot of manga, like over a hundred books I would guess). It was an interesting group, I felt like I was in a movie where people end up at a hotel or some place where everyone is just twisted. It was funny though, and a different hostel experience.

After 2 nights at Adelaide Backpackers, we went on a trip to Kangaroo Island. It was awesome. Our guide picked us up and we went and saw some cool places on the way out of Adelaide before catching the ferry over to KI. There was a really neat hill we drove to that people go to look for whales, we didn't see any whales, but the views were amazing, and it was just a really peaceful place. There were some cool rocks to climb on too, and we hung out there for awhile. We did a lot of really cool stuff on the island. There was so much wildlife there! In the 2 and a half days we were there, we saw koalas, kangaroos, echidnas, penguins, australian sea lions, new zealand fur seals, wallabies, and lots of sheep. Not only did you get to see these animals, you got to see tons of them really close up. The two places we went to go see the seals had hundreds of them, and you are only a meter or two away at some points. The kangaroos are everywhere, and one that was hanging around one of the picnic sites (it had a baby in its pouch too) even let us come up and pet it. The farm we were staying at had two koalas that lived in the trees right outside our building. It was crazy how many animals there were. We also went on a couple hikes, went sandboarding on these dunes called the Little Sahara, and visited these rock formations known as the Remarkable Rocks. They were quite remarkable. Another cool thing I found out about the island is that the air you breathe there is the cleanest of any place other than Antarctica (according to the guide at the sea lion beach). It definitely was very fresh air. It was neat visiting in wintertime also, it is definitely off-peak and there are hardly any other tourists there. We had most of the areas to ourselves wherever we went, and apparently this is definitely not the case in warmer months. Our guide said that the island just seems more wild this time of the year, and that it is definitely a different experience than if you were to come in the summer when it is busier and less stormy out on the ocean. At one of the hikes we went on, we hung out at these cliffs over the water for a long time just watching the waves. They were probably the biggest waves I'd ever seen in person, at least 5 meters high, and they would even splash water up where we were on the cliffs. It was really an awesome thing to see.

Our group for this tour was pretty sweet. Everyone was stoked to do the activities and pretty outdoors oriented people. There was a Swiss-German girl that was in Australia to learn English, 2 British guys, and a crazy Austrailan guy that was pretty amusing. He was about 50 I would say, but acted like a six year old. He was obsessed with the plant life on the island, and would touch every plant we went by. He apparently used to work for an animal trainer and told us that kangaroos are really hard to train because they will never bond to people, and that they are like sheep in that they don't care at all about humans, even if you bottle feed them and raise them from birth. He was just sortof a goofy guy, and had random things to say at just about every time of the day. Our guide was an Australian named Hamish, and he was really cool. He drove us around in these mini-buses on mostly dirt roads, and we were always blasting some sort of music that would bring me back to jr. high school (crazytown anyone?) while driving through the island. He had a really diverse iPod for sure (Elton John, Michael Jackson, Kanye West...), we even listened to Chris Rock for awhile, it was awesome. The first night on the island he hit a wallaby, and we gave him a lot of shit for it the rest of the time.

We got back into Adelaide at about 8PM on a Thursday, and I went running and Shannon told me I was crazy, and then we went out to a bar with her friend that lives in Adelaide. It was a fun night, we met some crazy people and had an adventure trying to find our way back to the hostel we were staying at. We chose really out of the way hostels, but at least the new one (Backpackers OZ) is normal and does not have any obviously mental people around.


Photos are: kangaroos hanging out in the parking lot at the visitor center, the hill with the awesome view and rocks outside of Adelaide, spooning sea lions, baby sea lion, Shannon and I sandboarding the little Sahara with turbans, baby New Zealand fur seals, and the kangaroo with a joey in her pouch that was begging for food at a picnic site.