Australia

It was very weird coming back to Australia, I don't know what it was, maybe my time in New Zealand felt very long (in a good way!) and it felt like it was ages before that that I had left Melbourne, but coming back made my head feel weird. Plus I wasn't back in Melbourne, I was in new territory in Sydney and near there. Anyway, I flew back on xmas eve and drove up to the Blue Mtns and spent xmas there. Christmas day was a bit difficult. It was really foggy and you couldn't see much in the mountains, so my plans of spending the day going around to various sites was sort of ruined. I couldn't just pass the time in a cafe either because everything was closed, so I spent more time in my motel room watching tv than I would have liked to have done. I did join this free xmas lunch though that a group puts on every year in the town I was staying in, that was really nice, I chatted with a young couple from France and we got a free meal complete with ham and turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and veggies, then plum pudding for dessert. They had xmas crackers on the tables (for the Americans, these are cardboard things that you pull apart with a pop and they have silly little toys in them and jokes and a little paper crown) and I had to try to explain the joke in it to the French couple, heh. Fortunately there was ok weather on the 24th and 26th, so I did get to see the beautiful mtns (which is more like a canyon really), but it was more rushed than I had hoped. I think I got some good photos, so look forward to those.

Now I'm in Sydney and the weather is beautiful. =) I caught up yesterday with some people I know from Holland (for those who know them, I saw Hayley, Egor, Hassan, Jude, Carolyn and David) and we had a picnic at Mrs Macquarie's Chair and it was so gorgeous, a bit cool actually with a strong breeze from the water, but the Opera House and Bridge were behind me and there was blue sky. So lovely. I've seen a bit of Sydney, a couple of neighbourhoods, but I can definitely say I prefer Melbourne. Sorry Sydneysiders... I just feel more at home there.

The plan is to see the big New Year's Eve fireworks tomorrow, so if you see them on the news or something, know that I was there! Have a happy New Year's everyone and best wishes for 2008!

I've been on two trips in the past week or so. Nice to finally do some travelling! The first was last week, one day to Wilsons Promontory. It was so beautiful there, lush hills (though also rocky hills since the whole area is made of granite), beaches with blue water, wildlife... Our tour group had a very good day exploring. We did two walks and the first one, to a viewpoint, was quite tough for me. It was fairly steep, but I felt so out of shape, lagging at the back of the group, and sweating like a pig. Partly that was due to the fact that there was hardly a breeze, though normally it's really windy out on the Prom. So I just got hotter and hotter and had no relief. I've never sweated so much. But I made it and the view was totally worth it, a green valley of gum trees coming down from the hills and heading towards one side of sea. Going down was much easier and I found that the sandal-y shoes I bought for walking do well on slick surfaces like all the granite we were climbing over. Later in the day we also took the scenic route to one of the beaches - more beautiful views and interesting rock formations. The beach we went to is called Squeaky Beach because the sand is made of very fine granite and it makes a squeaky, whistling sound when you walk on it. I think it would have been nicer to have called it Singing Beach, but oh well. I dipped my aching, hot feet in the water and we sat about on the beach soaking it all in. When it was time to head back to Melbourne, we stopped at a flat bushy area to look for wildlife, which we definitely found. The kangaroos had come out to feed and there were countless on this plain. You could get quite close to them before they'd hop off, it was amazing. Plus there was a female with the legs of a joey poking out of her pouch! It was awesome. We saw some emus in the distance as well and openings to wombat burrows, but no wombats, though we saw two along the road (alive! not roadkill... Or as our tour guide called them "sleeping" wombats). Also many birds, like huge cockatoos, and an evil bird that swooped in on me and this other girl.

Yesterday I got back from my 3 day trip to the Great Ocean Road, a famous drive that is rather similar to California's Hwy 1, or the twistier parts of 101 in Oregon. I wish I could have stayed much longer and enjoyed some of the beaches more, but I was glad to have gone for a couple of days at least. The weather wasn't brilliant, but the water felt warmer than at the Prom and the beaches were practically empty. Not so for the big tourist spots though, like the 12 Apostles, these sandstone rocks just off the shore further west down the coast. They're pretty famous and much photographed and so it was swarming with tourists there. Still, quite pretty. I also did a treetop walk in an area called the Otways, a forested point sticking a bit south. They've built these high platforms in the forest, so you can walk amongst the treetops, 20-30 meters above the ground. Plus there was a tower that went about 40 meters up. Kinda freaky, it all is a bit wobbly to be able to sustain high winds, but I liked it, and it was an amazing area. Got lots of photos there, to be posted someday.

Not so fun about both of the trips: the flies. I've heard about flies being bad in Australia, and their numbers have picked up in Melbourne as the weather has been warmer, but it wasn't until these trips that I experienced enough flies to drive a person nuts. We'd be walking in the Prom and I'd notice how the person ahead of me had a whole mess of flies on their back and backpack, and then I'd realize that I probably had the same, and yeah, there'd be a bunch on my bag when I took it off. In the meantime about 6-10 are constantly in your face as you walk, going in your ear, up your nose, landing on the corner of your mouth - anywhere that is the most obnoxious. They'd land on my glasses, so I'm glad I wear them or I guess they'd be on my eyes. It was bad enough while walking, but then when you'd stop, you weren't a moving target anymore and they were everywhere. It was hard taking photos - either one would get in the photo or they'd land on your nose and tickle you and you couldn't get the photo taken... They are vicious, vicious things and it's only going to be worse in the outback in the middle of summer...

I drove a rental to the Great Ocean Road, so I survived 3 days of driving on the left! And I managed to get the car safely back through Melbourne, though I went on this roundabout journey since I'm more used to walking than driving, but I found my way eventually. I also had to do two hook turns in the process, which I did successfully! Very proud of that. Funnily enough, I had the same car as I had the last time I was in the US, a Hyundai Accent, so it was a bit familiar. It was all difficult at first though, but I could tell how used to it I got by the time I got back to Melbourne and realized I was much more confident than when I left. I never accidentally pulled onto the right side of the road (there are a lot of tourists on that road though, so there are a lot of signs reminding you "Drive on the left in Australia"!), but I did at first hit the wipers a lot instead of the blinker because those are switched around on the steering wheel. Also I never quite got used to the gear lever being to my left; thankfully I had an automatic...

So I leave for New Zealand on Saturday. I feel all ready to tackle their roads now, possibly even in a stick shift if that's what I get. And looking forward to a new country and I'm sure much amazing scenery.

I realized I haven't uploaded any new photos in quite awhile, not counting photos of my stupid hair and a lizard, so I thought I'd pick some and get them out there. They're a bit random, since I haven't done a solid touristy thing in awhile, but that's ok, here they are. If I haven't said this already, note that I do plan to put many more photos online once I am home; I'll probably put them in a separate "new" section on Flickr. It's just hard to edit many right now, I edit them via an online service that involves uploading them first, so it's a slow process.

Yesterday I found out that my 3-day trip to Wilsons Prom is now a 1-day trip, thanks to the tour company not booking the campground for me, or not being able to because of low numbers, or I don't know what, the two days of camping are unguided so low numbers shouldn't matter. I was really really looking forward to this trip, to camping and being able to spend a couple of days in the park, so I was not happy to get this news. I'll still be going Wednesday, but just for their 1-day guided tour which still takes in quite a bit, but it's not the same...

I've got some good food freebies at work last week. On Monday a girl in the department brought in stuff she'd baked over the weekend. In the morning (well, throughout the day really) we had chocolate balls rolled in coconut, for lunch there was cannelloni (stuffed pasta), and in the afternoon she served up a pavlova her mom had made. It was my first pavlova and I found it yummy. For those who don't know what a pavlova is, it's pretty much the national dessert in Australia (and New Zealand, and there's a bit of an argument over which country invented the pav (as it's known), but when I mentioned the idea of it being a New Zealand invention to someone at work, she said that was a silly idea, but then she's an Aussie). A pav is a base of baked meringue topped with a layer of whipped cream and then various fruits, usually things like kiwi fruit, strawberries, and banana. It was nice that I had a homemade one to start with; you can buy the meringue base pre-made at the store, or make it from a mix, but those supposedly aren't as good.

On Friday some various leftover nibbles were brought to our department from another department, things like a fruit plate and meats and cheeses. Unfortunately they were brought over just after I ate lunch; if I'd known all that was coming, I wouldn't have bought lunch.

I wanted to mention a place I've been frequenting that is pretty unique and a bit hard to describe. It's a bakery chain called Breadtop and they manage to be sort of French but mostly Asian. They have usual items like jam donuts and croissants and danishes, but then they have buns filled with red bean paste and green tea rolls. Other items sort of fall in between as just being unique to this place, like a pineapple custard roll and a coconut bun. Everything they make is so fluffy and soft, I dunno what they do to make it that way, maybe I don't want to know. Anyway, they've been my latest temptation, and since they sell so many things and are quite cheap, I can't resist popping in to try something new.

I haven't mentioned the Vietnamese place Wendy and I went to a couple of weeks ago. There's a suburb just over the river from us, Footscray (home to Lonely Planet), and it's like a Little Vietnam. Wendy has a favourite place there and we popped over one night for dinner, but they were closed already. So we went to a different restaurant just down the street which was good enough for me, not sure how it compares to the restaurant Wendy wanted to go to. We got these funky Asian 4-colour drinks with jelly and I don't know what else in them, delicious prawn egg rolls, and bowls of a noodle soup with chicken. The bowls were massive, big enough to drown yourself in, and by the end I was absolutely stuffed and it still looked like I'd hardly touched it. All that food for only $25 or so for the two of us.

This Monday night (yesterday) I moved out of the share house and into the apartment I mentioned that's much closer to the city. The last couple of days in the house were sweltering. It was 32 or so on Sunday, then Monday was predicted to be 37, though it got up to "only" about 35. (Yes, these are the Celsius temps, sorry to the US people, but if you'd like to convert to F, go to onlineconversion.com. Suffice it to say it was bloody hot, esp for this time of year; 35 C is 95ish F.) Sunday I was at the house all day, cleaning up my room and packing. Even though my room is usually quite cool because it's downstairs where it's more sheltered and shaded, I was still building up a sweat packing. I treated myself by heading in the afternoon to the milk bar (convenience store) for a peppermint Magnum (yum!), though to get there I had to walk up a steep hill in the midday heat, so it almost wasn't worth the effort. I slept most of Sunday night with no duvet; quite the contrast to when I moved in and I buried myself under 2 duvets and a blanket.

I went to the house after work Monday to pack up the rest of my stuff before moving across town. It was quite sad to be leaving the wonderful location next to the river. I sat out in the backyard watching the sunset for awhile and I also gave Molly the dog a hug goodbye. I had way too many bags to go by public transport, so I got a cab and soon arrived at the swank apartment building Andrea, and her sister, Helen, live in. Andrea is a friend of someone I worked with in Amsterdam and the mutual friend put us in touch. I'm very lucky to be able to stay with them for a bit. The apartment is amazing, very modern and open, and the view is awesome. I mentioned before that they're on the 29th floor, which is the top of their building. The view is to the east and south; you can see the Botanic Gardens and Shrine of Remembrance, South Melbourne, Albert Park, and I think St Kilda along with a bit of the bay. Unfortunately, though it is up so high, a lot of noise still comes up from the traffic, esp since there is a freeway near the building. So it was a lot louder than I was used to, but in the room I'm staying in it's pretty quiet. I can walk to work now, though this morning I took a tram because I was really hot already, but I was able to get up half an hour later than before, which is very good. So I'll be staying with Andrea and Helen for about a week and then I go for 3 days to Wilsons Prom and when I come back to Melbourne I'll be staying at a cool-sounding hostel called The Nunnery that's in a former convent. It's in an area of the city I really like, so I'll be looking forward to staying there.

Off to walk home in the warm evening air. =)

It's been a long week. On Monday, I found out that the lease on the house I'm living in won't be extended, it will end on the date that's been planned all along: 19 November, which is only next Monday. There were hopes it could be extended, but the actions that needed to be done didn't happen and we were told to leave on the 19th. Two housemates are planning to stay, arguing that they can't move out that soon, but I'll move out Monday evening. I worried for a few days about where I would move to for my last couple of weeks in Melbourne, but in the end the friend of a friend saved me. She lives very close to the city in a highrise on the 29th floor (!!) and she has a spare room I can stay in. I was so relieved that worked out, and I'll be happy to be staying closer to the city before I leave Melbourne. I can't stay there until I leave for New Zealand, unfortunately, there will be a few days I'll likely stay in a hostel, but I can stay there for most of the time I have left. I'm rather eager to leave the house I've been living in, though I will miss living by the river and watching the amazing sunsets we've been having.

In the meantime I've been working still and I work through the end of next week. It's been ok, not a bad place to work, but I hate getting up so early and doing the whole rat race commuter train thing. I don't know how people do this for their whole lives. I also hate the offices we work in, it is so depressing to have no windows and no idea of what is going on outside, esp since we've had a lot of sunny days lately. Since I don't drink coffee, I've developed my own routine of drinking Milo to give me a kickstart once I'm at work. Milo is a malted drink, sort of like Ovaltine, it's very popular in Australia. I put 4 scoops of Milo and 2 sugars into a big mug, then I fill half the mug with boiling water and the other half with milk, to make it creamy and to help cool it down. It helps wake me up a bit. I get out for lunch every day, I am lucky to work right in the center of the city, but we only get half an hour, so you can't get a whole lot done. I can't wait until I am free from working and can have lazy weekdays again of just enjoying the city. I realized that this week is the first time I've worked a full 5-day week in almost 3 months. Tough life, I know. =) I'll post news later on how the move went and what I'm up to before I travel...