On A Penguin and Mountain High

Hello from gorgeous and cold New Zealand! It's been a crazy couple of days already, but since we scored some free wifi, we thought we'd take advantage and write a little update. 

We arrived in Christchurch to freezing cold weather and just an hour after an aftershock (damn!) on the 4th. Met up with our friends Stephane and Jenny and we're picking up where we left off in 2008 when we parted ways in Melbourne- they're perfect travel companions. Got our car and cruised around Christchurch as Disaster Papparazzi (hey, I call it photojournalism!) -- seeing all sorts of cracked, condemned, and empty houses, shops, and streets. The city centre is fenced off, crumbled, and deserted, and there are workmen about but that's all -- Adrian said it well when he remarked it felt like something out of a zombie movie!

From there, we drove inland on a dreary and cold afternoon after a big breakfast at Denny's (yes, the American chain!!) towards Mount Cook, watching the mountains in front of us get taller and taller, and oohing and aahing and stopping the car every time we saw a snow-capped peak peeking out from the clouds. And nearly every landscape belonged to us-- there's a certain feeling around the South Island that I've experienced only in the Aussie Outback: a huge sky, a massive landscape, and a peaceful and profound emptiness-- solitude, I guess. Very hard to describe! (Has anyone else felt this sort of thing? Help!)

It cleared up just as we hit Lake Tekapo, a beautiful blue glacial lake. We kept on until we hit Mount Cook Village in the evening, a contrived little ski chalet-feeling settlement  built in a flat valley beneath towering mountains with a posh hotel, 2 hostels, and a couple of houses for the Department of Conservation - Mt Cook is NZ's highest mountain at 3700m or so, though not that tall by Canadian or European standards- but still pretty amazing. We stayed and ate in this lovely "Backpacker Lodge" with a pub decorated with deer head hunting trophies and great beer called Tui on tap -- unfortunately the "grocery stores" were basically a few items of junk food and instant noodles behind the hostel reception desk. Ugh. So much for saving money by cooking! Every room had a view of the mountains that was almost too perfect-- it felt constantly like we were looking at a painting, not a real scene!

This morning we set off for a hike to Mt Cook lookout, a really cool trail running along the valley floor through grass and lots of spiky plants. We got close to the mountains and another turquoise lake at the lookout and heard a BOOM and a rumbling sounding something like a big truck going over a bridge on a highway... this happened a few more times, minutes apart, before we saw what it was: avalanches high up in the snowy mountains! Just crazy. We hiked another trail later on to Tasman Lake, in the same area, and this time found a huge blue lake with giant ice chunks floating in it-- that didn't look that big until we saw a teeny little yellow tour boat cruising between the icebergs.... and we realized how warped our sense of perspective is.

After our mountain hikes we headed back to the coast in our car, passing rolling hills, perfectly still lakes, and many, many sheep (with which we play our very favourite country-driving game... honking at sheep and making them hop and run this way ad that.... a forgotten pleasure from our drives around Tasmania, but somehow a game Stephane and Jenny also know! Maybe it's universal?) We made it to the coastal town of Oamaru about two hours before dusk, and checked out the Blue Penguin Centre to find out about seeing the little blue penguins the town, and this part of the coast, is known for. Turns out they've turned the place into sort of a Phillip Island (Australia) style circus-- $25 to sit in the grandstand and watch the penguins swim into shore from the ocean. 147 penguins counted last night, they kept telling us! We sort of wondered if we could just spot some on our own, and then one of the ladies at the centre let it slip in hushed tones that: "If you drive to this spot on the map right now, it'll take you only about 5 minutes to get there, and if you look hard and peer into the bushes alongside this beach, you might see a yellow-eyed penguin, as they come in from the ocean around this time to their nests in the bushes, where they live and hide along this inlet". Why not? We thought.... we could always come back to the penguin circus later.

We get to the viewing area and it seemed the word was out -- there were 5 or so other cars parked there, and it actually wasn't long at all before we saw funny little shapes in the bushes on the steep incline from the beach. Penguins! More emerged from the grasses and we were totally photo happy... and even video happy, as we watched them build nests, shake their cute flipper arms, and make the weirdest bird noises ever (we'll edit the clips together and post them on the blog in the future). It was insane! They totally stole the spotlight from the adorable little seal flopping around on the beach far below, but ah well, these were really cute penguins! 

Finally the sun set and we were so full of penguin-spotting joy that we just headed to a hostel and a grocery store.... and then what do we learn from the lovely hostel manager? Well, if we just walk to the town pier, there should be plenty of the little blue penguins nesting along the rocks at night. Sure enough.... well, none of us have ever seen so many penguins in one day, but there is something about spotting rare (?) wildlife in their natural habitats that just gives you this amazing feeling of satisfaction. Euphoria, really! And so far New Zealand has been a continuous shot of pure euphoria. We can't wait to find out what comes next!

Back to Weirdness

So it's been nearly a week since our English jet popped us back into what is now our bizarro world: Canada. And holy crap, is it ever hard to describe the feeling. It's been great to catch up with our families after so long-- my parents were surprised that I "haven't changed a bit" and I have to say I was a bit surprised to find everyone the same as how I left them (aside from my mother's nose stud!). But why should we be surprised at this? August was a month of reunions and they were all great-- it was just like picking up where we'd left off, like we'd seen Andrew, Krissy, Juan, and Laura a week or two ago, not years ago! Definitely a great feeling.

Aside from the people being pretty much same same (that's quasi-Thai, folks), I have to say many other things are the same as how we left them. Radio stations are still playing the same crappy songs they were repeating to death 3 years ago (have we not had enough Verve or Coldplay or Tragically Hip yet??); there's still nothing on TV at noon, or any other time of day really; lineups at the OHIP office still as long as ever... the usual. I was surprised to learn yesterday that yes indeed, I do still remember how to drive, and after years of living on the left-hand side of the road, trying to learn manual transmission, switching to an automatic car on the right lane feels natural all over again. I'm still reaching for the turn signal on the wrong side of the steering column though!

Maybe all this sameness is making our trip memories feel like it was just a movie we watched last week. It's amazing how quickly memories flit away. I always love the first few days in a new country, when everyone's accent sounds a bit funny (try going into a Timmy's after speaking 'Australian' for a couple of years) and the architecture is still new to me. I wasn't planning to readjust so quickly-- in fact, I was planning to be weepy and culture shocked for ages-- but I think it just kind of happened. Perhaps Britain was an excellent buffer to help transition between Asia and North America. Or maybe in the back of my head, I'm telling myself it's just another leg of the trip: my brain's way of dealing with the return.

It's also weird for us to be apart after more than two and a half years of hanging out every day-- now with all the catching up with families, there's some distance between Adrian and I. But we're in agreement that while things here might be the same, we're a little different inside. Like when I arrived to my old bedroom, and was astounded at how many clothes I have. (Who needs this much stuff?? Good god!) The average food portions in restaurants are way too much for us-- six months of eating teeny portions of rice for each meal has changed our stomachs, it seems. Neither of us has any desire to watch television: perhaps after having so much real-life entertainment for so long, a moving picture on a screen is hardly fulfilling. Some of these changes aren't a bad thing to hold onto, really-- but I guess after a long trip like ours we're bound to come back a wee bit altered.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and we'll keep you posted on what's happening. That travel bug doesn't just cure itself after all! To look at things on the bright side, at least now we have time for some much-needed reflection on our many experiences-- something we never really had time for while constantly on the go. We'll be sure to share often! Keep in touch.
xoxox, D.

Another month gone, another year older....

Hello from jolly old England, where we've been hanging out for the last little while. It's a bit colder, quieter, and a whole lot calmer than Asia, but the sun sets really late and people are pretty nice, and it's not a bad spot at all for a little exploration and some long-overdue reunions!

We've just realized we're now on our 3rd continent of the trip, which has turned into a makeshift round-the-world tour (who would've thought?). As soon as we crossed the equator for the last time (actually in Malaysia this dawned on us), we noticed the crescent moon flipped into a frown, rather than the smile we knew so well from Australia. Weird! It was a loooong plane ride from Kuala Lumpur to London-- 14 or 16 hours we think-- but as soon as we emerged in the far, far north, we realized it truly was goodbye to the warm temperatures our bodies had acclimatized to. At London Stansted Airport, it was a "pleasant" (to use the captain's words) 17 degrees, but it felt like -17 to us. We're still adjusting, in our wool socks and 'jumpers'. It's all a lot more pricey than what we've been used to, and we're missing our daily rice intake a bit, but at least we felt at home again when we ended up in Manchester's Chinatown, surrounded by red neon signs and flashing twinkle lights...

But yes-- first stop on the itinerary was Shoreham-by-Sea, a cute little town on the southern coast of England, not too far from Brighton, where our friend Laura has ended up--with her lovely English hubby Adam and their adorable baby Ella. We had a great few days there in "the south", touring Shoreham, Brighton, and London, and got to experience the 99 Flake on Brighton Pier and some Marmite (which we pretended to eat and then fed to the baby). We spotted our first real Banksy graffiti in Brighton, and got to hop in the back on one of those cliche-but-so-cool London black taxicabs when our sunny day in London turned into a downpour (they're very spacious). In Shoreham, everything was very cute-- even the graveyard-- and chock full of little old white-haired ladies and secondhand shops, and fet a bit like the town in Hot Fuzz. We learned that houseboats are the hot real estate in Shoreham, and there were some pretty crazy ones made out of old buses and general junk.... cool if you like living in the mud that is!

We left Laura and the family to head north-- completely on the wrong train, as we still have no idea how to read the tickets here... got a bit of a scolding from the train conductor but we played the dumb tourist part well!-- and found our old friends Andrew and Krissy in Macclesfield, a cute town a bit south of Manchester. Not long ago they scored a fantastically huge house with many floors and views of the green rolling hills outside town. The local pub (about four doors down) is full of characters and the men's toilet gets a great review on www.pubtoilets.com, and the lady behind the bar already knows us by name. Only problem with Macclesfield is whenever we go for a walk, we always end up in another random cemetery...

Between all of that, there was a day climbing the rugged, impossibly green grassy hills around Castleton (below) in the Peaks District National Park, a day roaming the picturesque streets and free museums in Manchester (left), and a weekend of Gaudi, sangria, and beach in Barcelona (visiting another old friend, Juan). Yesterday we spent Dayle's birthday touring Liverpool, soaking up all the Beatlemania and atmosphere of the old buildings that were everywhere. We're getting a good dose of English pop culture (Little Britain, Top Gear, Fonejacker, Big Brother...) but we're still a long way from understanding the accents. It's hard to believe we have one week left here and that's it!

High season fun in Java

We're a week into our Indonesia trip now and so far it's been a pretty interesting place to visit. Time to catch you up on our adventure!

After our flight fiasco from KL, the fun didn't stop yet-- our new flight left hours late too, and we landed in Jakarta around midnight. We caught a cab into town to the small budget-accommodation area and trudged down steamy Jalan Jaksa with our off-balance baggage only to find guesthouse after guesthouse with "full" signs. We yelled to each other over the loud live bands playing at the bars, got befriended by an odd (and possibly sketchy) Frenchman, Patrick, who kept urging us to drop off our bags at a nearby bar and he'd help us hunt for a place to stay. A few people-- including a wily prostitute and another tough looking dude yelled to us to stay away from "that man" and so we lost Patrick as soon as we could. Actually, the locals hanging out alongside the street were very helpful, pointing us to places that might have rooms and then when we found they were full, offering to call people for us and suggesting new spots. Finally we ditched Jaksa street and ended up on Jalan Johar, which was a LOT nicer looking that sleazy Jaksa but probably had price tags to match. We tried four or five fancier hotels and even they were full. Were we going to have to pull an all-nighter, drinking next to our packs til people checked out? Indonesian school holidays had just begun that day (our luck!) and people explained that it wasn't just European summer that was filling the rooms, it was the locals too!

We hardly believed it when a smiling man behind the desk of the very swank-looking Hotel Bumi Johar said he had a room available. But the TV wasn't working, he said, and bargained down his original price for us. Oh, and neither is the air-con, is that a problem? (Haha, we don't even like a/c!) We look at each other and he bargains his own price down further still, to 250,000 rupiah (about $25 USD). Well, it was quite a bit over the budget (we were hoping more like 70,000-100,000 Rp) but what can you do at 1am? Turned out the room was so nice-- fluffy bed, marble floors, hot water, free buffet breakfast, and housekeepers to pick up after us!-- we stayed for five nights!

Jakarta itself was pretty crazy, with no real city centre, heaps of traffic and pollution, really noticeable gaps between the super-rich and very poor. On our first day we braved a city train to head to the original Dutch port of Kuta (formerly Batavia). We clutched our bags from leering eyes and jumped on the old monorail-style train to head north. It was something out of a movie: dim, grungy, and packed, people hanging out the sides of the train as it veered above the city (there were certainly no closing doors to keep one from falling out!), and performers and vendors constantly pushed their way through the crowds to peddle their talents/goods. Kota was full of old Dutch colonial buildings and had a really quaint atmosphere. Crossing the streets was a bit of a nightmare-- constant speeding traffic!-- but we clung to locals as they crossed and dashed across as fast as we could. We checked out a history museum (right), got asked to be in many peoples' photos, and cooled ourselves off in the lovely Cafe Batavia, a grand old dame still stuck in the 1930s-- a great spot to sip an ice coffee, or if you can afford it, one of their cocktails. To complete the atmosphere, there was a live singer performing Sinatra hits and such to the handful of people inside-- Adrian couldn't resist the urge to karaoke a few songs with him, and others became braver after that. We left giggling at our first afternoon in Jakarta and decided to brave another form of public transit to head south within the city to meet Adrian's old college classmate, Diena. The "Busway" is a fairly new public transit system, with a few routes on nice a/c buses, with dedicated lanes to beat the insane traffic of the city core. What the Busway planners did not work on was creating some sort of order at the stops-- it was elbows-out as we became part of the swarming mass fighting to get on the next bus. Brought us back to our mosh-pit days. [I'm pretty sure I had my butt groped as well- D] Finally we pushed onto a bus... repeating our favourite analogy about "the journey being the most exciting part of the adventure". There was a great happy reunion with Diena (who was slightly weirded out at how much we enjoy public transit), and we met her husband and little son, and got to hang out at the family's (absolutely gorgeous) Balinese-style house for a fantastic evening.

The next day we checked out what was designed to be the city centre by the country's first (ambitious) president Soekarno in the 1950s. Being a Sunday as well as school holidays, it was packed with people visiting the Washington-Monument-style Monas. (The previous night we whizzed past what's been named "The Pizza Man", another of Soekarno's creations). Again, we were asked to pose in a bunch of strangers' photos, and even led an impromptu English lesson to a group of 15-year-old girls in hijabs. We didn't get much sightseeing done (as usual) but the charming Indonesians we meet along the way have been making up for it anyway. We met Diena and a friend of hers for some beers back at Batavia Cafe (we learned it used to be home to many raves back in the day) and to a beer garden down south in affluent Kemang. We learned that a love of Guns N Roses is apparently universal, that big (and mullet) hair is huge among Jakarta kids.

We spent the next few days running errands and enjoying the faint wifi signal we could steal from the comforts of our awesome hotel room. We said hello to everyone who greeted us on the street (a lot of hellos!). Michael Jackson continues to blare on speakers everywhere (thank god we don't have a TV). We tried some local food, and indulged in a little Pizza Hut too. We even came across the informal Jakarta press club: the hang-out spot of all the news photographers/ photojournalists in the city-- they were a fun bunch who were pretty excited about politics (the national election was coming that next day, July 8-- and as a country that's just emerging from dictatorships and hoping to shake its corruption, the election's big! Apparently the official results won't be officially counted for a week-- HUGE COUNTRY!-- but it appears "SBY", the current prez, has got the office again).

Finally we decided we should get seeing some more of the country, and took a train east to Yogyakarta (pronounced "Jogjakarta"), Java's cultural hub. The train travelled past some awesome scenery, including a few pointy volcanoes, and we ended up in Jogja a few days ago. It's got a better vibe than Jakarta, as it's a bit smaller and not so overwhelming, though as it's a real touristy place, we spent today dodging "invitations" to visit batik galleries and dance performances (tourist traps/scams rampant in the city). In between all of the hassles, we visited plenty of cool places: a bird market (lots of tweeting and cock-a-doodling), climbed old walls of the ancient city, and snapped photos of the nearby volcanoes looming above Jogja; visited the kraton (walled city), and the sultan's palace-- we gather Jogja still has a sultan, though we weren't lucky enough to meet him. And even though we're not morning people, we dragged our sorry butts out of bed to do THE thing to do in Central Java-- visit the ancient temples of Borobudur at sunrise, an absolutely magical sight as the mist fades from the surrounding hills and palms and the surrounding volcanoes materialize, while the temple itself glows a pretty yellow. Was definitely worth the extra coffee!

I blame the beach!

We’ve been quite tardy on the blog, and there’s only one way to put it: it's because of the beach.
Standing on these pristine white-sand beaches, mango shake in hand, looking over the clearest water ever... yup, it’s the hard life.

Earlier back in Bangkok we’d met up with an old friend from our fruit picking days in Australia. What luck, Birte had finished a month living in a monastery on the north-east of Thailand. Monastery living was similar to what we’d encountered in Burma only there’s no Junta, the roads are 1000 times better, plus there’s electricity and running water.
Well, as you can imagine we all decided quite quickly that the islands of Southern Thailand were definitely the place to be for some R&R. With our joint tickets bought (via sleeper train & boat) we set off.
Train travel was very fun, it’s addictive especially when you can travel and sleep at the same time – it’s just so appealing to me. Round about 9ish a porter comes by and transforms your seat into a bed, I recommend the lower bunk – you get the window. Then at first light the porter returns to wake you from your peaceful dreams yelling at the top of his lungs about the next stop coming up.
The boat was fun too; it’s a 2 hour ride from Suratthani to Koh Samui – this allows you to get your “base tan” going, so that when you arrive on the island you don’t blind everyone with your white skin.

Koh Samui was a great place to get to working on our tans, we found some beach bungalows for 400 Thai baht on the sunny beach of Lamai – that’s on the east side of the island. Then something funny happened:

Nothing.

It seemed the entire time we were there we did nothing of any substance. Pure gluttony.
The travel gods took out their vengeance by giving Dayle “Shingles”, but we didn’t let that stop us! Before you ask – YES, Dayle stopped growing a horn on her face and is in full recovery, if not fully recovered thanks to the plentiful (and cheap) pharmacies of Thailand.
On Koh Pha-Ngan we went back to our old haunt on a northeastern beach, Thong Nai Pan Noi. Lucky for us we were very far from the “Black Moon Party” where neo-hippies get bashed on ecstasy and listen to trance and swap patchouli oil and talk about how they mastered the ‘dog pose’ so well they can sniff their own butts. Seems there’s a big ‘party’ for every single moon phase – even ones you never knew about, like; the “3-7ths of the first quarter Full Moon Party”. Yes, naturally all this builds toward the actual “Full Moon Party” where the dreadlocks really fly and the patchouli is rank on the beach for days.
Our beach at Thong Nai Pan Noi had a great sheltered bay, with 400 baht bungalows, and we even got to see a schooner moor in it – Adrian was very excited that it had 5 masts.
Wanting to get some diving in, it was a quick jump to Koh Tao. We did two great dives among batfish, angelfish, barracudas, and even a scorpionfish (very poisonous!), and were sad to leave. Each dive went for a bargain 1000 baht and we rented an underwater digital camera for another 1000 baht. The pictures, just like the dive, came out amazing – and as our luck would have it the battery died just as we surfaced from our second dive!
Somehow that’s the summation for our past 15 days; sun, sand, hippies, and diving. It’s really not our fault; we blame the beach!

Costumes, crepes, and kitty fun...

It's been a busy few weeks but plenty of good times to write home about. Adrian's been Mr. Corporate lately ("Buy, buy, buy! Sell, sell, sell!" he likes to say)-- well, maybe he doesn't work on the stock exchange but he sure loves dressing the part. You've gotta have a little fun at work! Adrian has been working downtown in an office tower of one of Australia's major banks (ANZ) for almost 3 weeks now, and has gleefully discovered a games floor in his building. So every Friday he and his co-workers sit in those video-game cars and race each other. Word is there's a beer cart that comes around the office on Fridays as well- now that's the life!

As for me (Dayle), I've been blissfully unemployed since last Monday, enjoying another wave of sunny, 25-degree autumn days. This week's been a little colder, so I'm not spending as much time doing crayon drawings under the old trees in beautiful Carlton Gardens (the nearby park where we sometimes chase possums at at night). It's been really nice to enjoy some "me" time, exploring the nearby neighbourhoods and shops, and running all of those little errands that have been neglected for months (and fixing tattered clothing and shoes!). The work will come soon enough-- but it's just nice to relax a bit for now. It's a "working HOLIDAY visa", as we say here, not a "working slavery visa"!

But actually, I'm not totally unemployed. On Saturday afternoons I get paid to play dress-up at this wonderful, humongous costume hire (that's Aussie for rental!) shop called Costume Factory. I applied for the job way back in January but only recently did they decide they still needed another staff member for busy Saturday afternoons. It pays great and the staff are all quirky arts students, painters, writers, and theatre enthusiasts, and we basically just help people piece together costumes for the unbelievable amount of costume parties that happen in Melbourne. (For a country that doesn't do much for Halloween, I have been shocked). My first day consisted of fixing up wigs and dressing mannequins as tacky tourists, gladiators, cowboys, and even a 'gay sailor' (that's a sailor suit with sequins!). And ever since I've dressed people up as flappers, Prince, Tina Turner, Alpen yodeler and even an Indian chief and Pocahontas. It's been a real exercise in creativity because a lot of customers walk in without any costume ideas, and it's also easy to get lost in the huge shop/showroom. But it's a nice place to spend a weekend afternoon and I do wish we were staying long enough to see what Halloween brings. And apparently the company's been around for ages, evolving over the years since the Gold Rush days! For that reason we have an amazing amount of gorgeous medieval wear, etc., which we rent to a lot of theatre productions too.

In other news, our roommates got a kitten last week! Pax is rambunctious and lively, and he's completely adorable (but more about him later!). He's also a great entertainer of houseguests--we've just finished a multi-day goodbye party for our French friends Stephane and Jenny, who came to stay with us after working in Tasmania. There was lots of wine-drinking, reminiscing, and a final crepe feast... and we definitely caught (me more than Adrian I think) a bit of the travel bug as we chatted about their plans to travel Southeast Asia. Our friend Bianca's also off to New Zealand now and we're possibly the only people left in Oz from our original Echuca crew. We can only wonder on which continent we'll all meet again... we'll miss you guys! xoxo, D.

Chasing the Fifty Year Storm

Last weekend we finally got away from the city routine and headed down to the Great Ocean Road-- a winding, 250-km-or-so stretch of gorgeous highway running along the southernmost point in mainland Australia (built by returning soldiers after WWI). We'd been hearing about it for ages, and so when our friends Bianca (the German) and John (the ranger) invited us to join them for this leg of their trip, we jumped at the chance. We set off last Saturday morning, girls in one car, boys in the other, equipped with VHF radios and off to see a picturesque corner of Oz none of us four had seen, outside of many, many postcards and books.

After emerging from a traffic jam around Melbourne's west end, our first peek at the coastline was in Torquay, Victoria's surf capital. With a surfing museum, surf lessons galore, and outlet stores for every surfer brand imaginable from Rip Curl to Billabong to Blunt (etc.), there's no doubt we'll be heading back to explore. But, we had a lot of ground to cover in two days, and made our first stop just outside Torquay at the legendary Bells Beach. And why does this name sounds familiar, you ask? Movie buffs, here's your clue:

JOHNNY UTAH: I knew you wouldn't miss the fifty year storm, Bodhi.

Who can forget Keanu in his hot surfer days in Point Break? Not us. We soon learned that despite our differences in ages and homelands, all four of us were huge Point Break fans, and so visiting Bells Beach--home to that dramatic final scene in the film-- was a bit of a pilgrimage. It wasn't long before the Point Break quotes were flying back and forth on the VHF. Appropriately enough, it started to pour rain like crazy just as we left our cars for the long boardwalk descending down the cliff. THE FIFTY YEAR STORM HAD ARRIVED! We tried looking for Bodhi in the waves, but it was pretty choppy and hard to get a good look (though we're sure he must have been out there...). Visiting Bells did finally confirm what Adrian and I have been suspecting after watching Point Break over here: the final scene was definitely NOT filmed in Oz. First of all, there are no beaches lined with pine trees in Australia; secondly, the beach in the movie is a tiny little cove, while Bells is actually a long sandy beach. *Sigh* (Check online and it seems we've all been duped: the "Bells Beach" pictured in the movie was actually a beach in Oregon) We got drenched during the walk, and spent a good part of the day with the only warm clothes we packed now sopping wet. Not so much fun. [If you're craving a little surf right now, check out this live web cam (and photos) to see how the waves are down at Bells.]

After Bells, the road became more winding, often running along cliffs which dropped straight into the ocean. The views were gorgeous and reminded us a lot of the drive from Port Douglas to Cairns (except colder). Though it's not always beside the ocean, as the name led us to believe, the farmlands it travels through are pretty spectacular too. We explored waterfalls, a lighthouse, cute little towns (Lorne, Apollo Bay), and watched packs of surfers along each beach, beginning to realize that the GOR may very well be Daisy's true home. Ever since we bought her (and who knows for how long before that), she's had a Bells Beach Rip Curl Surfing Pro Competition poster stuck up on a window--which eerily enough, fell off as we were lunching near Bells Beach-- and a sticker that says "I played Apollo Bay 2000" (the Apollo Bay Music Festival is a hippie music fest held in a cute GOR town in March) along with a couple of surf brand bumper stickers as well. We're sure she was quite the happy van despite the many twists and turns en route.

One of the other coolest sights from our first day on the road came when we spotted a bunch of cars stopped at the roadside ahead of us. At first we thought "Car accident!" but then Ranger John pointed out the bare branches of the trees around-- KOALAS! We pulled over with the other tourists to snap photos and film the adorable koalas munching on eucalyptus in their natural habitat. It was just after 6pm and they were lively as ever, hopping from tree to tree in the cutest of ways. They were also brown, not the typical grey variety we see on postcards. We even got quite close to one in the forest nearby.

That night we camped among sand dunes at Johanna Beach, site of one of many shipwrecks on the coast. It was gorgeous but so much colder than Queenslander camping (we'll pack better next time!). As we ate breakfast, tiny birds with bright blue stripes on their heads chirped and flitted around us. We set off for the most famous of GOR sights Sunday morning: the Twelve Apostles, a set of giant limestone towers just off the coast that are slowly being eroded by the elements over the centuries. These monoliths, alongside the high cliffs of the shoreline, really do make for a spellbinding scene, even after seeing it in a million photos (just like the Grand Canyon, or like Angkor Wat). We took plenty of our own pics, because, who knows how much it will change by the next time we visit? It'll be cool to find out.

There were more interesting rock formations along the way -- like Loch Ard Gorge, with a giant, noisy, creepy inland blowhole -- and plenty of historical plaques dedicated to all the ship which were destroyed along the treacherous coastline. The landscape here was fascinating-- the road was slightly inland, following the shoreline along a flat, desertlike plateau that suddenly drops into the crashing ocean far below. It was also neat to think about how close we were standing to Antarctica (you sure felt the chill in the air) as the wind howled straight at us from the south. And all this, just a few hours from our home in Melbourne! We turned back on Sunday afternoon, leaving Bianca and John to continue on their grand tour of Oz, and we headed back to the city, our zest for the camping life completely revived and thankful for our good old trusty surfin' van Daisy! We'll definitely be making a trip back to the Great Ocean Road as soon as we can--maybe next time with boards of our own.

WHOAAAAA! We just found out there will be a Point Break sequel.
Vaya con dios, brah.

Happy Australia Day!

Hello and happy Australia Day! Soon we'll be off to the festivities (believe it or not, more fireworks) and a full report on how the Aussies celebrate their day-- we've heard it basically about getting trashed and having barbecues. We expect more of the fashions we spotted at the Australian Open- flags worn as capes, face paint, strange wigs. Full report & photos to come tomorrow.

As for updates, the biggest news this week is Dayle got a job! It's quite dull- basically data entry and paperwork for a web solutions company. It's lame, but there's plenty of moments there that remind her of the movie "Office Space". Just something to pay the bills while she looks for something better (ie. in journalism), anyway... the company was pretty busy, so it was basically phone call Tuesday morning, interview in the afternoon, start work on Wednesday morning. And it's already a long weekend! (Thank god for that)

Adrian's still on the hunt, but managed to make the perfect latte for an interview at a cafe. This is after he fibbed a little and said he had "heaps" of coffee making experience-- and after his little bluff over the phone, took to the internet to find Videojug.com's guide to making gourmet coffees. Much research followed, and with zero practical experience, Adrian made his first latte with full confidence. He even made a design in the foam- a circle!

In other news, Dayle's first tram to work ended up crashing into another tram... so after planning to be on time, of course she wasn't. (Yeah, yeah, what else is new?!) No one was hurt, there wasn't even any damage, but the whole scene looked very much out of a 9/11 terrorism/disaster movie... people screaming, bouncing around. Quite funny, really.

We had a visit this week from our friends Bianca (from Germany) and John the ranger (from Taunton National Park in Queensland). Good fun! We sat around chatting, and had some beers in the "backyard"-- actually, more like the parking lot next to our front door. The house is getting pretty crowded and we're really missing having a living room and a backyard/front yard/porch... so we might try to find something better at some point. The landlord's quite annoying and comes around a little too often.... but that's another long and tiresome story.
For now, we're off to celebrate our very first Australia Day. And weird-- where we Canadians celebrate our independence from Europe on Canada Day, the Aussies are celebrating the first European settlements on the continent. But really it's about the beer for all of us, isn't it?

Adventures in Capricornia

After striking it rich on the gemfields (ha ha) we started heading east towards the coast again—excited because we had found out our tomato-packing friend from Echuca (well, she’s from Germany really) Bianca had found herself a nice job and a very nice park ranger in the tiny town of Dingo, Queensland. We hadn’t seen her since April and were planning to meet as she drove northwards and we headed south… though both of our trips took way longer than planned (such a huge country!) so hence the unexpected meeting in Dingo.

We stayed for a few days at Ranger John’s house on Taunton National Park, just north of the Capricorn Highway, feeling oh-so-lucky that we got to hang out in a park closed to the public! Taunton used to be farmland, until the farmer read a magazine article about a species of wallaby (the bridled nail-tail wallaby) that was pretty much extinct—the same kind of wallaby terrorizing his property that he was shooting for dog food. As the story goes, he called up the magazine, and Queensland Parks and Wildlife (QPWS), who didn’t believe him—apparently this type of news often results in local kooks making claims and such. It wasn’t until the farmer plopped a dead nail-tail on a QPWS desk that they believed him... and now it’s all history and Taunton now houses the biggest wild population of the adorable little nail-tail (about 90 of them, I think it was). We were taken out on a spotlighting adventure one night and got to see the little creatures in action—they have a sort of fingernail on their tail and they hop with their arms flailing around at their sides. Not sure why they’re so special, but they sure were cute.

And besides all of the wallaby-spotting, we had a great time relaxing and catching up (and doing some spotlighting of our own—with the biggest cane toads ever!). Australia’s a huge place, which makes it even cooler when you run into an old mate somewhere along the way!

We got a taste of the cowboy life over the weekend in Rockhampton (or Rocky, as the locals call it). Bianca had lived in town for a while and told us there was a weekly rodeo. Yeehaw! When we got to the Great Western Hotel, we found out there was no rodeo, just a band that night, but it sure was a hoot seeing the clientele dolled up in their best cowboy-plaid shirts and Wranglers. Country music videos played all night on the big-screen TV next to a pair of bullhorns, and we watched some hoons street-racing their utes—too cool! Not to mention Rocky calls itself the “beef capital of Australia”.

The only beef we had with Rocky was on Friday night, when we camped at a caravan park next to the wide Fitzroy River that cuts through town. Pretty and scenic, we ate dinner outside after applying plenty of bug repellant (as we do every night, being campers in a hot country). When we got back from our cowboy bar, we went to bed only to be woken up about a zillion times by sandflies (or “midgies”) eating us alive. In fact, I don’t think we got any sleep at all—we were killing them in our dreams and while awake. Maybe they were small enough to come in between the holes of our screen windows? They were inside and outside the van—and we’ve never had midgies like these ones, not even when we lived way up in the tropics. We finally got out of bed at 5am and headed to the showers… then sat around swatting bugs till 7am, when the office opened and we could argue for our money back for the following night (last time we ever pay in advance!). The guy at the desk was unsympathetic and claimed to be “open” about the presence of sandflies, and that we should just use bug spray and we’d be fine. (The amount of reapplying we had done I’m sure wasn’t healthy, anyway) We told him, “Dude, we’ve lived in the tropics, we’ve handled these before. They’ve never been THIS bad!” and the jackass said he had to keep a cancellation fee of a few dollars… insult to injury (not to mention there was a creeper in the girls’ bathroom and dive-bombing nesting birds on the pathways). We zoomed off and went to the nicer-sounding Southside Holiday Village to get some sleep! And the rest of our weekend in Rocky was much better… except for poor Adrian, who slept for day due to a cold.

Now we’re heading south—time to do some farmwork and get some cash and our weeks done for our visa extension (we had a great lead on a macadamia farm near Rocky, but troubles with “head office” has us and the farmer unsure). The only work on offer in our area was tomato-picking, and our strong aversion to anything tomato-related has us heading to the south end of Queensland in a flash, it seems. We’re going to do a little whale-watching (we’re in Hervey Bay) first before the farm fun begins, and maybe this time next week we’ll be working in a vineyard…