Fun in Australia

Presidents Dinner and Dance

2006-10-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

October 21st, 2006

At the end of the year, John Flynn College has a Presidents dinner and dance (PDD) combined with the Valedictory dinner. It is the formal event of the year, everybody gets all dressed up in suits and ties and dresses. All the girls were more dressed up than they were at Lawrenceville’s prom – everyone had their hair done and there was an even split between long and short dresses. But it was a pretty fun night.

This is me and the girls, Alli and Emily before we left

We took a bus to the Townsville Museum, and had drinks on the water over looking the marina. Then we went inside for speeches, awards and dinner. Our favorite aussie, made a great speech done by the a,b,c’s of Flynn. He had a nice spread of all the international students on there so it was really cute. Then the president gave a speech and recognized all the Valedicts.

This is me with the boys, Aaron and Jake

The dinner was amazing! We had an entre (which is an appetizer) of either beef or chicken, then dinner was either beef or duck. I got the beef and it was THE best fillet I have had in a long time.

After dinner, the student exec gave out funny awards for all the jokes of the year. I didn’t get half of them but, the ones I did were pretty funny.

Then we just danced for the rest of the night, and then went to our usual bar, Flynns, which was across the street.

More pictures in links "PDD" to the right

The Whit Sundays and Apollo

2006-10-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

September 21-27th, 2006

For break Soleil and I made plans to go to the Whitsundays together for a few days. We booked a sailing trip and decided to meet up at a hostel in Airlie beach the night before we left, which was Thursday.

I left Townsville around 3:30 and took a Greyhound bus (all by myself ☹ ) up to Airlie beach- four hours away. I got to the bus stop in Townsville about 30 min early – after a long, embarrassing walk trying to find the station. When I got there, I started talking to this interesting Aussie bloke. He decided to tell me his life story about how his boyfriend, just broke up with him and he gave him everything, and how is mom got a sex change and now wants him to call her his dad, and he wanted to know if I knew any gay Americans.... Yea he was quite interesting…

The bus ride wasn’t that bad – we watched two movies, had a stop for dinner and got to Airlie beach around 8pm. I found the hostel pretty easily, checked in and asked if they could tell me where Soleil was staying. They told me they couldn’t say exactly where she was staying but that she was really close to me. So I went to my room to find 6 Korean guys eating pizza. They offered me a piece, which I refused. They could barely speak English, so I dropped off my stuff and went to find Soleil. Well, she was asleep in the next cabin – I recognized her scar and her bag – but I didn’t want to wake her, so I wondered around the hostel. I met these really nice Aussie guys, and had a few drinks with them. Then Soleil wondered by with her friend Sara, so they came up and hung out for a while, and then went to get some food. After we got some food, we got dressed and went out on the town. We ended up at this one bar down the street and I ran into one of my friends from London! He was taking a semester aboad in New South Wales, and was in Airlie on his break as well. We talked for a bit, exchanged numbers and decided to meet up again after both of our sailing trips.

This is Soleil and I with two of the bartenders at the bar we went to

Then it started to get late so we decided to go back and get some sleep for our trip tomorrow. I slept in Soleils bed cause I didn’t want to go back to my room with the Koreans.

This is Soleil and Dave in our room at the hostel

The next day I got up early, and went exploring Airlie for a bit. Soleil, Sara and two of Soleils friends from Brisbane – Dave and English – all hung out on the beach all day and made necklaces from the cool shells on the beach. That took us pretty much all day. Then we went and checked in, got some beer and boarded the boat.

Once we got on the boat they took all our shoes – supposedly its safer to walk around the boat barefoot. The four of us were the only Americans on the boat. Everyone else was backpackers from several different nationalities, including, Irish, Swedish, British, German, and Dutch. It was so much fun getting to know everyone.

This is Soleil and I at the bow of the boat as we left the marina

We set sail for 2 hours, it was so relaxing and the view of the Whitsundays was beautiful. By the time that we got to the island, it had gotten really cold, so everyone went snorkeling except Sara and I. We decided that since we couldn’t get a nice warm shower after being freezing let alone any shower, we didn’t feel like being cold and wet. Once everyone got back on the boat they had put out some snacks and we all started drinking. We sailed to a different location, then put the anchor down and had dinner. The stars were even more beautiful out in the middle of the islands then they were on the tablelands. After dinner we all played drinking games, talked about each others countries (And no one said ANYTHING bad about America – it was a first since I’ve been here!) After all the games on deck started getting boring, we went down and played some beer pong on the engine, with metal mugs and a plastic bag tied up into a ball. The deck hand and cook played with us. It was soo much fun. But all the sun had worn me out so I was the first one to pass out. It was so much fun to sleep on a sail boat!

This is Soleil and Dave playing some beer pong

This is soleil in our bed - sorry its blurry but thats how big our bed was

This is the sunset off the back of the boat - and the one below it is of Soleil, me and the Captain

The next morning the Captian started the engine at 7am, we had breakfast and were off to White Haven Beach which is an island of very fine, pure white sand – beautiful. It was under protection so you weren’t allowed to take any shells/sand/anything off the island. We played football, hiked up to some lookout and hung out in the water for a few hours.

This is our crew on White Haven Beach

Then we headed back to the boat. We sailed to a different snorkeling spot, and we all went snorkeling again. It was beautiful, Soleil had an underwater camera so I’ll have to get some pictures off her of that.

This is our crew on the deck of the boat

Then we set sail again and Soleil and I put up the little sail that time. When we got to our anchoring point we ate dinner, played mafia and a few other drinking games. I passed out again – first – it was kinda embarrassing.

The engine started at 7am again, then we had breakfast and sailed back to Airlie Beach. It was the most relaxing, beautiful and fun trip I have been on.

When we got back to Airlie, I went back to the hostle and checked in to my room for the next few nights. I was meeting up with a few girls from Townsville, so I got put into their room, and a bunch of our friends from the boat left their stuff in my room cause they were headed to a different town in the evening and had no where to leave there stuff. So it looked like I packed 6 bags all for myself, it was kinda funny. Then we all ate lunch together and returned to the beach to finish our necklaces, and then headed over to the lagoon and played some football in the water.

This is Soleil on the beach searching for shells for our necklaces

Sara and Soleil left for Bundaberg around 5pm and the rest of us went to have a few jugs of beer with the rest of our crew from Apollo. Then we just went out for the rest of the night and had a great time. I went back to the hostel with all the Townsville girls, and I got to sleep in my own bed for the first time the whole trip!

I slept in the next morning, then went to the lagoon and laid out all afternoon. We went out again that night, but had an early night in cause I had booked a scuba diving trip for the next day.

The next morning the people from the Seasations – the scuba diving boat – picked me up and brought me to the marina. We went out to two different dive sites, they gave me all my gear, tanks, lunch and everything for only $100 aussie dollars! It was a great trip. I got to see a giant raiss (I call it a napolean fish) named elvis and a found a nudie branch on my own. It was fun. I met a bunch of people from James Cook University on the boat too. One of the girls actually studies Physical Oceanography, which is something I was interested, so she told me all about her degree and made me even more interested. My buddy was a guy from Perth, he was a really cool guy. So that was a great trip.

I got back to Airlie pretty early, so one of my friends and I went to have a few jugs before everyone else was ready to go out. Two more guys had moved in to our room, they were both Americans so we got to know them and told them to come out with us. I met up with Ryan again (my friend from London), and I also ran into a few people from Lawrenceville while I was out too. Its amazing how small the world is!

But that was my trip. It was a blast, but I was ready to go home.

There's a lot more pictures if you look for Apollo under links to the right

Adventure Weekend

2006-09-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

September 15th-17th, 2006

The program I came with took us on an “Adventure Weekend” this weekend to the table lands. We took a bus about 4 hours north west of Townsville and stayed at a place called Mungalli Falls. We were basically in the middle of nowhere . We got there when it was dark out and there wasn’t another light for miles. The stars were AMAZING. I have never seen the milky way the way it looked up there. The girls and I just looked at the stars for an hour then decided to go watch a movie with everyone else. After the movie, we all struggled to find our way back to the cabins in the dark and not knowing where we were. I stayed in a cabin with three other girls. I felt like I was at a summer camp. We bonded and it was fun ☺

This is the view we had as we ate all our meals

We had our 7:15 wake up, had breakfast, then hopped on a bus down the street to a hiking trail. We were in the rainforest that had been hit by a cyclone 6 months before, so the entire canopy was gone, and all the trees were just starting to flower again. Our guide told us that there were more varietes of species of tree in one square meter of this rainforest than in the whole amazon.

When we got about 100 meters in to the hike a wild turkey hopped out onto the path and ran away from us, then another 100 meters after that a HUGE wild pig jumped out of the bush and ran right in front of us. It was quite scary, but it was fun to see Pumba.

The guide pointed out strange fig trees that start from a seed that was dropped on the top of a tree, then grows down around the tree until it completely strangles it, and kills it, then becomes its own tree. There were also trees with the most interesting root systems. The roots acted like buttresses, they would grow a root in a such a way that it would support itself through each cyclone that went through.

This is the buttress tree

There is no poison ivy in Australia, but they do have Stinging trees, which are small plants whos leaves look like they are furry, but the spikes are just like broken fiberglass. The leaves feel the heat of your body and move towards it, when the fiberglass gets in your skin it stays there for months. There is another plan in the forest that has a sap similar to wax, that helps to remove the spikes. Another crazy tree is the wait-a-while. It is a vine that has hooks similar to a fish hook, and as the wind blows these hooks grab on to the surrounding trees and helps to pull the plant up as it grows. So, those wouldn’t be real fun to have around as you run through the forest…

The best part of the hike was the waterfalls. We saw 3 of them on the one hike, and they were beautiful. The last one we went to was huge, and there was a swimming hole underneath it. The boys went in the water, but I saw some leeches and decided I didn’t really feel like getting my blood sucked.

This is the waterfall

After the hike we went back for lunch and then went abseiling. We got harnessed up, and repelled down this steep hill backwards and forwards. We were gonna go down a rock wall, but because it was pretty much raining all morning, they decided the rock wall wouldn’t be safe cause it was too wet. But that was a fun time, got a nice butt workout walking up the hill after repelling down.

Then the best part of the weekend – we went down the “land slide” It was this massive water slide that went into a tiny pond. It was about 100 meters long down a pretty steap hill. You slid down on these little foam things, and went about 30 miles per hour down the slide – it was AWESOME.

This is the landslide

After we finished on the slide we had a while before dinner so the girls and I decided to go on the platypus walk and see if we could find some plateaus. Well after sitting there for 30 minutes we think we might have seen the head of a platypus, but we may never know – they are much smaller than I imagined though… we did see a cute turtle and an eel though.

After dinner, we had an Australian trivia night. The girl and I were the Blond Sheila’s and we of course won ☺ After that we went down to the water fall to look at the stars and the glow worms. It was the most romantic thing ever! Too bad I was with two other girls….

The next morning we had our 7:15am wake up again, then we bused around to all the touristy spots around. Saw a giant curtain fig tree, which started as a big tree that got strangled by the fig tree, died and fell over on to another tree, and the fig tree kept growing until it hit the tree that it fell on, thus making a curtain. Pretty cool. This is it

Then we saw the most beautiful water fall ever at Milla Milla.

And these two Giant Pines that had a 6 meter girth. They say these types of pines can grow up to a 11 meter girth. And supposedly these were at least 1,000 years old – pretty cool.

So after that we packed up and headed home.

Castle Hill and Pub Crawl

2006-09-10T02:32:00.000-07:00

September 9, 2006

Allie, Ryan and I decided to be brave and hike up Castle Hill, which is a small mountain in the middle of Townsville. We caught the bus over there, got there around 12:45 hiked up, got to the top around 1:45, then hiked down and caught the bus around 2:45 – so it was a nice little walk. Ryan and I had gone to an aeroboxing class the day before and had the hardest workout of our lives. I think I did more pushups in that class then I have ever in my life. So we were quite sore walking up.
Castle Hill from the bottom

We took the “goat trail” up the mountain which consists of basically just dirt and steps all the way up – very painful when your legs are already sore. Only part of it is in the shade so needless to say we were quite hot in the middle of the day. But I was good and brought water for us all and put on sunblock – So I didn’t get a bit of a tan, which is getting quite annoying since I’ve been here for over a month and half and am still as pale as when I came…

We saw a little gecko on the way up. And a few weeks ago there was a huge fire on Castle Hill, they brought in helicopters with water to dump on it to get it out. Well, one side of the trail was still completly black from the fire. It was an interesting sight.

When we got to the top we could see the airport, the strand, magnetic island and we could just make out James Cook. It was really beautiful up there.
The view of the Strand from the top

There is a road that takes you up to the top as well, so I might get one of my friends to drive us all up there during the sunset one day cause that might be the most beautiful sight I will ever see.

When we got back we had to get ready for John Flynn’s Pub crawl. The theme was Comic book characters, nursery rhymes and fairytale creatures. Em and I really wanted to go as Mario and Luigi, but the boys talked us into being the girls from Team America – so we decided to go as Team Australia (a spoof on Team America – which is a movie made by the same people who make SouthPark) . Well the guys got soo excited when they went out to look for their costumes that they ended up spending over $60 just on guns. After they got their guns they decided that it would be much cooler if they went as SWAT. So they went as swat – ditched me and Emily – but they promised to be our bodyguards for the night. (Em and I spent a total of $10 on our costumes)
Em and I and the SWAT boys

We started the crawl at 5:30 – First pub we went to we didn’t see the boys but for two minutes when they told us that they almost got into a fight with some of the townies. They made it out of there without fighting, and went on to the next pub. We rarely saw them all night. But, I did find the boys carrying a crippled boy from college to one of the bars cause it was such a long walk for the kid. I almost melted - they were such sweet boys :)

At our 3rd pub we had dinner, didn’t fill me up at all, but that was ok. Then we went to two different pubs before they dropped us off in town and offered to take us home immediately or we could find a way home later on our own. So, Allie and I decided to stay in town, Emily went home.
All the girls

It wasn’t that crazy of a night, but I had a great time. Only one person had to be sent home in a taxi because she was so inebriated. And I didn’t even have a hangover in the morning!

Footie Game

2006-09-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

September 1, 2006

The Townsville Cowboys played their last game against the Parramatta Eels for Rugby League yesterday. Em and I had gotten tickets to the footie game for only $15. We were told to get “lawn seats” because then we would really enjoy the experience. We tried to get as many of the Aussies to go with us, but no one really wanted to go. I guess the Cowboys weren’t really that great this year, and no one wanted to see them lose again to the Eels.
This is Emily, Alli and I at the game

Em, Alli and I took the bus to the game. We were warned before that it might rain, so I brought Bryce’s nifty difty little rain jacket – and it came in very useful. We got there about an hour before the game started so we could get good seats and met up with a bunch of our friends from college (some Aussies actually did end up coming after all). We sat on the lawn, which was right by the in-goal (endzone). We had pretty good seats. Beers were only $4, so we got a few of those, and sat and watched the game. The hour before the game, the minor league teams play each other. One of my friends from college, Dozier, actually played for the league just below the minor league, so he introduced us to one of the other players and the two of them hung out with us until it started to pour. This is Dozier, Greg and I

The stadium was the most bootleg stadium I have ever seen. There were four grandstands, a few box seats and the lawn. The stadium was not nearly as big as Georgia Techs, and they still couldn’t fill it. The stadium was sponsored by the Dairy Farmers, so they sold milk and raffled off prizes for people who had certain milk cartons. They blew up giant cows on the field for the pregame show and for half time. And there were a ton of cheerleaders, who went around with the 5 different mascots getting autographs during the game

It rained on and off during the game. But it wasn’t bad at all. And because it is footie of course there were no rain delays. Rugby League is a completely different game then the rugby I know. Dozier was trying to explain the differences to me but I had a hard time understanding. Supposedly, you get 6 tackles to get to a try. After the 6th tackle you have to give up the ball, so they usually kick it after the 5th tackle. There is no stopping play after the tackle. The person who got tackled has to put the ball back into play. This means that there are very few scrums and absolutely no line outs – my two favorite parts of rugby. The game is different, but it was fun to watch. It reminded me of a mix between red rover and American football (which is called Grid Iron here for some reason that I haven’t figured out why yet)

So the Cowboys won 22-8, which was really exciting. They put off fireworks for each try, which was awesome.

After the game we took the bus into town and hung out at Flynn’s for a while, then just went home. We were in bed by 2 – just to be woken up – quite rudely – at 6am because there was a cross country race and everyone who ran from John Flynn got John Flynn points towards the Fisher shield – which is the prize between all the colleges and halls. So we were woken up at 6, just to stand in the rain until 8 [with no food or water], then walk 6k around the college. Every time we got to a water station – they had just ran out of water –not so great after a night of drinking and 4 hours of sleep. Some of our residents ran; one girl won it all and one of our guys placed 3rd. So that may help us toward the Fisher shield, but our college was definitely the least represented out of all the colleges. This is me and Em in the morning - we're not happy

Needless to say I got back to the college – ate a huge breakfast and slept till 1pm.
But TOMORROW I GET TO GO ON THE YONGALA!!! Will be the best dive trip I have ever been on and I can’t wait!

Beer and Bowls

2006-08-24T19:11:00.000-07:00

August 19th, 2006

It was one of my Aussie friend’s 21st and for some reason Australians decided that even though you can already drink, gamble, drive, buy any adult video you want, smoke and buy lottery tickets, turning 21 is still a huge event that needs celebration. So, Conway had the ultimate celebration. He booked an entire Bowl Club for all 60 of us. He put a $200 tab on the bar and we paid for each of our games. It was a pretty good deal

This is a picture of me, Sambo and Conway (Conway is on the right and John you met him when you dropped me off)

Bowling is a traditional Austrailian game for older people. So the tradition is that everyone gets dressed very preppy and in all white. The guys looked AMAZING - they all dressed up for it, one of our friends even bought a woman’s blouse for the event. Other than me and Em, the girls just wore white pajama pants and white tanktops, they weren't nearly as cute as the boys were.

Me and Emily

Bowl's is similar to Bacci, but the balls are weighted, so they begin to turn as they slow down, and you roll the balls you don’t throw them.

The club was just like an old fashion country club. There were old fashioned fridges, the ladies room was all antique decoration and there were even a bunch of sweet old men who took care of us. They taught us how to bowl and served us at the bar. There were 7 courts for everyone to play on. So we drank before during and after.

This is a picture of the two old guys that taught us how to bowl

This is the boys in their white

We bowled until around 5pm, when we went for a walk to the culture fest down by the beach. Most everybody went to get food in the Culture Fest, but Em and I just sat by the beach and watched the water, it was beautiful too bad my camera didn’t work (all the pictures are from Emily’s and Conway’s cameras).

This is me testing the water

Then we found a good sushi place in town. It was a sushi train – kinda like the one in London, but the train only had 6 different pieces. We didn’t want anything on the trains – nor did we know what anything on the train was - so the guy offered to make us some. We asked for California rolls, which are called sunny sushi here, but they didn’t have anymore crab so they made them with prawns – it was delish. Then we asked for a spicy tuna roll, well they had no clue what that was. When they brought it the tuna was half cooked, so needless to say the sushi was not very good.... But I did get my Australian coke bottle there so I can continue my collection.

Then we went back to town to our favorite bar, Flynns. One of the dive masters that was on our trip showed up and we hung out with him pretty much all night. We also ran in to one of my friends from Emory, had a nice talk with him. The 10 or so of us were still in white so we got lots of interesting looks and comments. We even got in a few pictures for the local paper – we’ll see if those get in.

Eric and I at Flynns

Then we went to the bus stop some of us got pizza on the way. Emily was complaining about how much she wished she had gotten pizza just as a man walked by with a whole box and offered her a piece.
Then I saw a kid from Lawrenceville talked to him for a quick sec before his girlfriend or whoever the girl was, got mad cause we were talking about a “prep school’ and took him away, ha.

But that was our day of beers and bowls. It was a great time!

Pictures

2006-08-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

So I stole some of the underwater photos that one of the other divers took and added them to my links. So check out "Pelorus Island Scuba Diving" I tweeked the color a bit because when Mikey took the pictures he had it on blue saturation, so these are closer to the actual colors, but they still are not nearly as vibrant as in the water.

I've made a bunch of albums, so I could organize pictures better. All the albums are under my links section to the right. I'm going to put all my random Australia pictures in "Random Australia pictures" then everything else is self explanatory.

To look at pictures click one of the links to the right. When you get to that site don't register or sign in or anything, just press view slideshow, and you should be able to see all my pictures.

Enjoy!

Pelorus Island and SCUBA diving

2006-08-07T00:42:00.001-07:00

Aug 5 – 6th, 2006 (WARNING: this is a long tale)

Emily wanted to get her scuba diving certification and one of our friends from college happens to be a scuba instructor. He, Aaron (aka Pony), offered to take Emily and me out for the weekend and certify Emily. He told us that there would be only a few of us, we would be sleeping on an island and we would have about five dives total for the trip, well this is just part of the amazing adventure we went on this weekend.

We met the fish bus at 5am on Saturday morning. And drove about an hour north, to a little town called Ingam. Ingam is a sugarcane producing town, and contains the longest conveyor belt / jetty in the southern hemisphere at about 5.5km in length – 3.4miles. The jetty is just used to transport the sugarcane to the ships in the ocean and it takes 40 minutes for sugar to be transported to each end. But back to us, we were going to one of the five islands just off the coast of Ingam called Pelorous. We all loaded the boat – a total of 14 people, 7 divers and 7 staff members (most of whom were getting certified to become instructors on this trip), and took off on our 40 minute drive to the island. We got to the island at a low high tide, so we got the boat into the shore as close as we could, then hopped into waist deep water to unload all our stuff. The camp site was already set up, we just brought food, clothes and swags – which are the coolest invention ever, it’s a bed for camping that is waterproof and just rolls up. The site was right on the beach, which by the way was not a nice sandy beach it was covered in dead coral, so it was not comfortable, nor easy walking – but I did collect a lot of beautiful shells and coral. This is a picture of the ocean and the campsite.

When we were all unpacking we sat down for a debriefing. Craig, the skipper and dive master, tried to prepare us for all the animals we would see in the island. He started by mentioning the drop bears, bears – similar to koalas- that fall from the horizontal branches and attack you as you walk to the toilet (yes they had made a toilet in the campsite, they called it Satan’s Closet). Then he told us about the hoop snakes (which was quite scary to me). Supposedly the hoop snakes are the fasted snakes going downhill. They start at the top, make a hoop with their body as they are rolling down the hill then when they are ready to attack they just propel on to the attackie. Well, this idea baffled my physics savvy brain a bit, because I really couldn’t imagine that being physically possible. But, Craig continued. He told us about the harmless horned, slimy and furry billbees that will be milling about, but not to worry about them. So, I, a blond, American tourist who has only been in this crazy place they call Oz for a week believed every word he said. Others, were a little more skeptical … I did find out later that drop bears were a myth, as were hoop snakes and that slimy billbees were toads, furry billbees were rats, and horned billbees were wild goats, and I did see them all except for furry billbees on our trip.

Then we went for our first dive. The water was a brisk 23 degrees Celsius – 73 degrees Fahrenheit and it was about 8:30 in the morning in the middle of the winter, with wind blowing off the water, so needless to say we were a little cold, but I have been much colder conditions than that before and I kept reminding myself of that fact. The dive was beautiful, the visibility was great, we went about 10 meters, 33 feet, saw a fake Nemo, lots of beautiful coral, so many colorful fish, a lion fish which was a very cool sight to see, and lots more coral. We then surfaced for about an hour, and went back to down in the same site, different location.

We had split up all the divers, three went with Pony for training and the rest of us were with Bubbles for advanced certifications and fun diving. Well the novice divers got in the water before the fun divers did. So, when one of the fun divers went to roll off the boat into the water, Emily was right below him. His tank valve landed on her head, luckily she was wearing a hood and it wasn’t the tank that hit her, but she did get a cut on her head and it was bleeding. So, I of course gasped when I saw the blood – which was terrible cause that scared Emily even more, but in the end it all worked out, Emily was fine and she went on diving. We referred to this incident as the attack of the aqua dropbear. This is picture of Emily's head.

The second dive was very similar to the first and after it we went back to the campsite and made some lunch. The food for the whole trip was fantastic, all the in training dive masters cooked and it was great. Our meals included, fajitas, sweet and sour chicken, steak and eggs, sausage, toast and baked beans for breakfast.

When we finished lunch we went out for our 3rd dive of the day, which was right off the coast of the camp site. This dive was also beautiful. We saw a ray, another lion fish, some people saw a barracuda but I didn’t, a few parrot fish, and some other really cool fish. When we came up, Emily ran up to me and said “I almost drowned!” She had to remove her mask, replace it and clear it under the water as one of her skills. Well, with the combination of her wearing contacts, not being used to salt water, the visibility being terrible and the cold, she had panicked when the water hit her nose, sucked up water, tried to bolt to the surface (from 10 meters is quite dangerous – but Pony stopped her), then spit out her regulator and sucked in more water. After Pony replaced her regulator, and calmed her down she was fine, but she never was able to take off her mask, even in the next two dives, so she didn’t end up getting certified even though she had done all other skills necessary. But, Pony assured her that she would be certified before she left Australia. Then we looked up at the horizon and saw baby whales jumping in the distance. They went on playing for over a half an hour, it was amazing!

After that we came in for a bit, before we went out for the night dive. This was a picture of the island at sunset.

I was a little hesitant to go on it because I was freezing and tired and it would be my fourth dive of the day, and after all that happened to Emily – I was the only girl, which meant something was bound to happen to me. But I decided that night dives were always my favorite so I sucked it up and went. We hopped in the water and were on our way. Well, little to my knowledge, there was a barracuda close to us and they also saw some type of reef shark. But, I didn’t see either of them, thank god. We did see a beautiful colored nudiebrank – which is basically a soft coral, a tiny crab and a bigger crab, a sleeping parrot fish, and again some other really cool fish. After that we came up, ate dinner, sat by the fire for a bit and went to bed. I had my own tent, while some people decided to sleep on the beach and froze – that would have been really cool to do if it had been warmer because the stars were amazing. This is a picture of the campfire in the site with the ocean in the back ground. And the second picture is Emily and my tents.

I was safe and warm in my tent, which attracted a bunch of horned billbees in the morning. The next day we all woke up before 7am, Bubbles took his advanced student and another instructor out for a deep dive, then when they got back we had breakfast. Around 11am we went out for some more diving at a different site.

This dive was my absolute favorite. The visibility had gotten a lot better but the current had picked up. We saw an eel, which was the scariest thing ever, then we saw a barracuda, which was even more scary. But we also saw, some more fake Nemos, and some other really cool fish. And we also saw a large sea turtle at the surface before we went for the dive, that was beautiful as well.

The last dive we did – number six for me! was a drift dive – they would drop us off at one end of the site, then we would just go with the current and the boat would pick us up where ever we came up. Well, when we were driving up to the drop point we saw a bunch of manta rays, they were huge. So we hurried up and got in the water and tried to find them. But that didn’t work out. But that dive was still a lot of fun because we didn’t have to do anything, we just sat and watched everything go by us. Here's a picture of Pony and me. And the second one is a picture of Bubbles and me.

After that dive it was about 1pm, we went back to the site, had lunch and packed up to head out. It was not fun leaving at all. To pack up the boat, I just wore my suit and a t-shirt, and put my shorts in my bag, because I would be loading the boat in waist deep water. Well, Craig, being Craig, wouldn’t let me get my pants out when I got on the boat because everything was already packed and there was no way I would be able to get my bag out. So, I sat on the whole boat ride home, and at the dock with no pants until they had taken the boat out of the water and began unloading it – it was quite embarrassing.

So, since we couldn’t drink for the entire weekend, the fish bus stopped at a drive-in bottle shop and picked up some rum and there began my night of drinking way too much, all of us went out to a bar when we got back – and I had my first day of Uni the next day which was so much fun to go through hungover, let me tell you. I had no clue where any of my classes were, luckily Pony had gotten up – he wasn’t about to go to class – but he had offered to drive me to my 9am class cause he knew where it was. So, he drove me to my class, I went in to the lecture hall, saw one of my friends from college, he was giving me the “no, your in the wrong place, get out while you can” wave. And I gave him the “no, this is my class, I’m in the right room”, so I stayed, to find out that it was some stupid engineering class and I couldn’t leave because I was blocked in my some woman and I felt stupid getting up in the middle of the class. By the way, I now know that I will never be an engineer – simply because of how boring this class was and how hungover I was sitting through this terrible class, where the teacher just read exactly what he wrote on the slides – it was terrible. So, I went back to my room and slept until one, and went to my physics class, which was so much fun, I think that’ll be a good class. I still can’t figure out why I was in the wrong class though, it’ll be an adventure finding it again tomorrow.

Hervey’s Range Tea House and Train Tunnels

2006-08-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

August 1, 2006

We went on a bus tour with a really friendly guy who showed us around a historical area. He brought us to this “tea house” which looked like a trailer home from the front, but the inside was beautiful. Everything was dark wood and very homey. It was built in 1965 for the cattle drivers at a hotel. He then brought us to some trenches where train tracks used to run. They used to bring nickel to a little place down the road. They brought so much that they depleted the source with in 15 year and ripped up the tracks in 1997. But along the tracks there are tunnels that they made by cutting through solid rock. Pretty cool stuff. Here's a pic.

Beside the tracks were patches of rainforest. We are in dry season right now (their winter) so there was very little to now water right now, but in a few months the whole place will be full of waterfalls – can’t wait! Here's pictures of the rocks.

But I was smart and brought sneakers this time so I had no problem hiking down the rocks, but the other cute little Americans decided to wear flip-flops, which by the way are thongs here – not to be confused with the underwear, I’ve made that mistake a few times, it’s a little embarrassing. they had a rough time of it. The view from down there was amazing though. Here's a pic

Supposedly, this patch of rainforest is one of the oldest. There are some type of pine trees here that grow an half an inch a year, and they were over 200 feet tall (or at least looked it) but this is one of the biggest patches of these trees in Queensland
After that little tour we went back to the teahouse where they served us “damper” and syrup. Damper is a type of bread that the cattle drivers used to eat while they were on the trail. It was delicious. Then we had our tea and I got a meat pie, which was quite delicious. Here's a picture of us in front of the teahouse.

Then we went back into Townsville and went to this little park that they just started building. There are three phases of building for the park, the first stage is done – the pool, art gallery and restaurant. The next phase is an AFL stadium (Aussie rules Football league), and I’m not sure what the last phase is. But the park is a 20 minute bike ride from JCU and its right on the river so we will probably go there more often especially since it is free. This is a picture of the pool, you can see the river in the background.

Magnetic Island

2006-07-30T04:28:00.000-07:00

July 30, 2006

Today we went to an island off the coast of Townsville called Magnetic Island. It is a beautiful island. We caught the ferry at 10:30, got there around 11am, and then spent the day on the beach. These two pictures are pictures from the ferry, the first is of Castle Hiil, which is a great hiking spot in Townsville - I will be going to it soon. The second picture is of the island from the ferry.

The girls really wanted to try the meat pies so they got them for lunch and I enjoyed the greasiest chicken I could ever imagine. Then we laid out on the beach for a bit and went kayaking. This is a picture of Emily and I on the beach.

The kayaking was amazing; the views were terrific we were all upset that we hadn’t brought a camera. There’s rumor that Sarina saw a giant sea turtle while we were there, but after investigating further it could not be found again.

After kayaking, we went to a different part of the island, where there was beach with big rocks. This beach is pictured below.

Everyone went climbing on the rocks (I didn’t bring sneakers so I didn’t think it would be safe to climb big boulders in my flip flops). Here is a picture of Luke and Shannon on some of the rocks

After that we caught the ferry and went home. So all in all the island was beautiful, but we decided that we’d have to go back sometime when we’re all more prepared for adventure, ie. hiking and snorkeling.

When we got back to college we ran into some adorable wallabies. So I had to take a picture

Getting Settled

2006-07-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

July 27th,2006 – July 28th, 2006

Well we got to the college just after they closed, but since we were with John that was no problem, he went and asked the kitchen staff how I was to get my keys. An RA from the college came out brought me my keys and told me the airport had called and my luggage was on the way. Well the luggage didn’t come after an hour and half of waiting, so John and I went to get food. We ran into our friend from the budget car rental at the restaurant and John bought her a drink, so now I really thinks she likes us. Then we went off to find John “accommodations” for the night. Well there is a Jehovah’s Witness convention and horse races in town so there were no accommodations for John in Townsville. So we went back to James Cook and he was going to go to the next town to find a room.

John and I had planned to meet up again at my college around noon the next day because I was to get up for breakfast before 8:30 and meet with my advisor at 10 the next morning. So I got up at 8:30, tried to figure out where my luggage was, they told me it was still in Melbourne – which was interesting to me considering they told me they were delivering it to James Cook last night. Well, then I took my first shower in 48 hours very quickly because it was 9:50 and I was supposed have a meeting at 10. But I made it to my meeting only 5 minutes late, and it all worked out. She told me everything I needed to know – I’m still very depressed that I had to miss orientation, it sounded wonderful – and the meeting ended at 12:30…. Hmm. When I get back to my college … no John … hmm, so I sat around and waited again for John. Finally my suitemate, Emily, came in and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk around town with her and I told her I was waiting for John, of which she replied with “Oh yes! I have a story for you” - which is quite expected when you mention John Wilson ☺ Well John had come and left – he couldn’t find an accommodation last night even in the town 60 miles from Townsville, so John slept in his car (I of course got my nice comfy new bed to sleep in, because John is sooo wonderful and brought me home before he tried the next town over). John then figured that if there were no accommodations last night there will be none tonight so he had booked a flight to Cairns at 2pm, so he had to leave and could not wait to see me off, which he was very upset about. This meant that John and I would have no contact for the remainder of Johns trip in Australia, because neither of us had phones at the time.

So, having heard that, I proceeded on my walk with my suitemate and one of our other new friends, Carlo. We found a walking tunnel near the college with a bunch of spiders in it. We looked closer only to find out that they were redbacks – spiders that are just as poisonous as black willows. So that was comforting. No snakes though which is exciting. We then found a beautiful spot near the river, and I took the pictures you see here. And eventually we found our way back to the college.

When I got back I found out from one of my RA’s that my luggage in fact did arrive last night and that he had taken it and put it in the conference room since I couldn’t be found. So, I got my luggage and everything worked out.

Just as I was unpacking, I heard John’s voice in the hall way, he had come back! He decided to take the flight at 4pm instead, so he wondered the city saw the sights then came back to see me. I gave him dad’s phone from London and my new numbers so he could call me if he wanted. And he was off again. I think John’s adventures in Australia would be much more interesting then my own. Maybe we should talk him into writing a blog.

Introduction

2006-07-28T02:03:00.001-07:00

So this is where I will be posting all my fun and exciting adventures in Australia. Let me know if there is anything else I should add. Don’t worry the writing will be terrible, but that should be expected because I am a physics major ☺
Hope you enjoy!

The Flight

2006-07-28T02:03:00.000-07:00

July 25 – July 27th
My whole 33 hours of traveling actually went much smoother than I expected. My first flight left Atlanta at 2:30 US time and flew to Chicago. When I got to Chicago I made it to the gate just before they started boarding. After everyone boarded they decided to make an announcement that everyone had to get off the plane because the plane we were on was out of service. So we deplaned and waited for an hour and a half till they found a new plane. I got a little nervous at this point considering I had 3 more connections to make, and one delay would set me off for the entire trip. They finally found a plane and we flew to LA. Luckily I had made the travel agent give me a 3 hour layover in LA so, I was escorted to the international gate and made it just before they began boarding for Auckland. Then began my 12 hour flight – which actually wasn’t that bad. My feet fell asleep at least three times, but the food was great, the seat next to me was empty so I got to stretch out, and I really only watched one movie and 2 office episodes (yes they had “The Office” on an Australian plane!! Memories of home already ☺). We got into Auckland at 4:30am New Zealand time, 2:30pm US time. Then I caught my flight to Brisbane an hour later – again making it to the gate just before they started boarding. That flight was very uneventful. However, the arrival was an adventure. I got through customs easily, but as I was waiting for my bags the dog would not stop smelling my bag (I found out later that my mouth wash had leaked and that was what he was smelling) So, they went through my bag and stamped my ticket at least three times. Needless to say (because I have never once traveled internationally and not lost my bag) they sent my heavy bag to Melbourne [I guess it didn’t make my flight from LA to Auckland so they sent it LA to Brisbane] But this was good because then I didn’t have to lug it everywhere and they said they would deliver it to me at my final destination in Townsville. After I dealt with that I had to check into my next flight and find the domestic airport (which was a train away – but no worries cause I had 3 hours to spare). So I got to the 4th security gate that I had to go through on the trip and found out that in Brisbane you don’t need to have a boarding pass to go to the gates – which is rather interesting to me. But finally got through that and sat and waited for John – who never showed up- I took the flight and decided that I would figure everything out at Townsville, see if I could track him down there. So I got to Townsville – by the way it is the smallest airport I have ever seen – checked on my luggage then checked on John. I asked a really nice man from Quantas if he could tell me what flights John was on and which he wasn’t, however there is this rule for privacy reasons that you can’t disclose information on passengers until a certain time after they land, but the guy must have liked me cause he tipped me off that John would be coming in on the next flight from Brisbane. So I waited some more for John. John finally arrived, we made friends with the Budget rental car lady and went on our way to James Cook University.